However, with the continued influence of the Sino-US trade war and ZTE's ban on sales, the war has spread to more companies. Japanese media, the British media, etc. have stated in succession that Toshiba's memory chip business may create variables. DIGITIMES even wrote that with With the anti-monopoly review in China, the Toshiba acquisition will be further delayed, and the supply chain will be assessed privately. It is believed that the acquisition will be difficult to shape in China.
There are two main reasons for this situation: On the one hand, in the context of the large trade war between China and the United States, due to the US-Japan relationship, the Toshiba acquisition case is very likely to be affected by the trade war and difficult to release; on the other hand, With the continuous expansion of ZTE's sales ban, Toshiba has recently notified related customers and temporarily suspended the sale of all products including Toshiba's memory chips to ZTE.
Sino-U.S. trade war, review difficult to release
Kyodo News reported on April 23 that Toshiba Corporation is discussing the sale of Toshiba Memory, a Toshiba semiconductor subsidiary, to deal with the dilemma of continuously failing to pass China's anti-monopoly review by the end of May. Measures.
On April 25, the Financial Times quoted a person familiar with the matter as saying that the acquisition of Toshiba's memory chips is most likely to be affected by the trade war between US President Trump and China.
The report stated that as Trump once lamented in the tariff statement that the US trade deficit with China was 'out of control', this caused the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to consider how to suspend the approval process when responding to trade.
Although, Bain Capital initially believed that after the upgrade of the Sino-US trade war, the extension of the acquisition was approved, according to people close to Toshiba, since the Trump announced the implementation of tariffs on China, Toshiba has begun serious consideration of this transaction, and Constantly evaluate other options.
On April 16, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the activation of the refusal order, prohibiting U.S. companies from selling all products to ZTE for a period of up to 7 years, and the ban will take effect immediately.
Since then, with the continuous expansion of the US sanctions against ZTE, it has been reported that the Taiwan region has already listed ZTE and ZTE Kangxun as targets for the export of Taiwan’s strategic high-tech goods, requiring companies to acquire strategic high-tech goods first. Export licenses and then export them to Customs, including MediaTek has received the request from the government and is actively applying for ZTE's export license.
Now, this notification from Toshiba also formally shows that as an important strategic partner of the United States, Japan is also cooperating with US review measures to carry out export controls on the sale of strategic high-tech products of ZTE enough. It is understood that this ban is on sale. The wide range of product applications, including smart phones, data centers and communications products, many products have been included in the ranks of high-tech products in Japan, this measure has directly made the impact of ZTE's lock-in sale further expanded.
The industry generally believes that as Toshiba announces its ban on ZTE's sales, the follow-up impact effect will continue to show. Among them, the most direct response is that the Toshiba storage chip acquisition case will be difficult to obtain approval in May, and it is more likely to be out ahead of schedule!