Toshiba Faces Unclear Future (reuters.com) 22
Toshiba shareholders on Thursday voted down competing proposals -- one presented by management and the other backed by activist shareholders, leaving the future direction of the embattled Japanese conglomerate uncertain. From a report: Management's plan to spin off Toshiba's devices unit and the separate call to seek buyout offers had both failed to gain the required 50% of the vote. The untidy outcome ensures there will be no immediate end to a four-year scandal-filled battle between management and foreign activist hedge funds, while underscoring deep divisions among Toshiba shareholders. Opposition to Toshiba's plans to break up the company had been widespread and included proxy advisory firms, and its failure comes as no surprise. But the outlook for Singapore-based 3D Investment Partners' proposal that Toshiba solicit private equity buyout offers or a minority investment had been less clear cut. Although 3D and Toshiba's other top two shareholders had supported the quest for a buyout offer, proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) had advised against it, saying the proposal "appears overly prescriptive and premature."
Weird summary (Score:2)
The untidy outcome ensures there will be no immediate end to a four-year scandal-filled battle between management and foreign activist hedge funds
It seems instead the hedge funds lost, both with their direct plan, and also with their alternate plan, and that the corrupt assistance to these plans by management wasn't enough to convince the shareholders, aka the owners. A very tidy outcome.
I remember Toshiba (Score:2)
Japanese Corporation (Score:2)
They are one of those crazy super-vertically-integrated Japanese companies that make nearly everything. TVs, computers, nuclear reactors, rice cookers, escalators, boat motors, massage chairs, cash registers, light bulbs - you name it.
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They are one of those crazy super-vertically-integrated Japanese companies that make nearly everything. TVs, computers, nuclear reactors, rice cookers, escalators, boat motors, massage chairs, cash registers, light bulbs - you name it.
Yes, I remember them doing that back in the 90s. I haven't seen any of their products since.
It's kind of like Sony. They used to make everything from the camera they filmed the movie on for their own movie studio (Columbia Pictures), the projector in the theater, the stereo system in the theater, to every part of the home entertainment system you'd watch the thing on later.
But not so much anymore.
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A sterio system in a a movie theatre, how many decades ago? You are missing a few channels there, unless you are using "stereo system" as a synonym for sound system
Obviously. My point was they made everything, including the speakers and amps. And at home the TVs, which I haven't seen one of their TVs in a while, but previous poster says they are still the best.
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Large conglomerates are a characteristic of a corrupt society.
Companies should be successful when they focus on making a better product at an affordable price. Nimble companies with minimal overhead do that best.
But when the system is corrupt, the successful companies are those big enough to afford the bribes and capture the regulators.
It is good that Toshiba is failing and might be broken up. Hopefully, more conglomerates will follow the same path.
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What you said would be nice. However, the big companies can offer some real advantages.
If you want a product to be affordable, you may need a company big enough to be able to buy equipment for mass production, have staff able to come up with a better way to produce the product, as well be able to survive to operate selling at a loss for a while until they can break even.
The Small Nimble company often will have a poor quality product, as being nimble makes specializing difficult. So we can have people screw
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With that name, if it holds the connotations of what "activist" seems to hold in anything it touches today, sounds like trouble for any company touched by them...?
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What is an "activist shareholder"?
With that name, if it holds the connotations of what "activist" seems to hold in anything it touches today, sounds like trouble for any company touched by them...?
They are exactly as you say. They buy up a big enough chunk of a company so that their voice has to be heard. Then they demand bad things for the company, like selling the company, splitting it up, buying things that are good for that investor but bad for the company, etc.
Activist shareholder definition (Score:2)
What is an "activist shareholder"?
With that name, if it holds the connotations of what "activist" seems to hold in anything it touches today, sounds like trouble for any company touched by them...?
A shareholder has some privileges over a non-shareholder.
For example, a shareholder can submit a resolution to be voted on at the annual meeting. Some variations and restrictions apply depending on the bylaws of the corporation.
As an example, at Tesla the owner of a single share used to submit an annual resolution to replace Musk as CEO in favor of a more traditional manager, and it kept getting voted down. Viewed as fringe during the years where this happened, that same person was notorious for doing that
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You are conflating "big" with "conglomerate". They are not the same.
Some companies, such as vehicle manufacturers, have to be big because of the capital investment required. Many other sectors, such as semiconductors and computers, benefit from scale. But that doesn't make them conglomerates.
A conglomerate is a company engaged in many unrelated businesses. Toshiba makes laptops, semiconductors, escalators, HDDs, home appliances, medical equipment, many services, and ... nuclear power plants. These are
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The thing is Today, We have a lot of Laptop companies that is still kinda bigger then the demand. Why doesn't Toshiba have a popular phone, TV, or tablet. I haven't heard anyone in a while proudly boasting of their new Toshiba product.
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The laptops are now known as "Dynabook", but I don't know if it's just a re-branding, or if it's a full-on sale like IBM to Lenovo.
I like the Toshiba laptops. I sold a Satellite Pro to a domestic customer in 2009, and she finally asked for an upgrade in 2018, Not a single part had failed (apart from some highly-polished keycaps), it was just too underpowered to keep being productive for her. I gave her a trade-in discount on a new machine, wiped and installed Debian, and used it for a music player.
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Toshiba has been struggling for years, and withdrawing from markets where they were not profitable. What's left is a shell and it's not clear how they can recover.
They need to get back to making stuff themselves, which means serious R&D, which means serious investment.
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The way they treated their phone system resellers when they dropped that business with basically no warning and no spare parts put a bad taste in my mouth. That was handled very badly and they should be ashamed. I haven't bought a single Toshiba product since.
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They used to make storage devices of all kinds. In fact they used to make the bulk of optical drives for Unix workstations. Back in the day, most or all of their SCSI CDROMs had a trace or a jumper that would enable them to do 512 byte blocks instead of 2k, and SGI aside all of the old Unix workstations with SCSI required that. Plextor was another one you could jumper for that. They merged that business division with Samsung's (TSST, Toshiba Samsung Storage Technologies) in 2004. Toshiba owned 51% of it. I
Good riddance ... (Score:2)
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Sounds like they free-marketed it and out-businessed the USA. There's a certainly irony when capitalists whine about the invisible hand punching them in the nuts.
It's "just business". Which is, I gather, the American way.