The Toshiba Chip Unit Deal with Tim Culpan

Tim Culpan from Bloomberg joined us in a two part conversation on the high impact news from Asia’s movers and shakers. In the first part of our conversation, he covered the backstory, drama and conclusion to the Toshiba’s chip unit deal and examine why Apple is involved with at least two of the major bidders. In the same conversation, Tim offered his perspectives on the TSMC 30th anniversary panel with the major players in the semiconductors industry and the recent Google-HTC deal.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

• Tim Culpan (@tculpan, Linkedin, Bloomberg), Columnist at Bloomberg Gadfly [0:38]
  • Since our last conversation, what have you been up to? [1:06]
  • The TSMC 30th anniversary panel with Jeff Williams (COO of Apple) giving an in-depth understanding of Apple’s relationship with TSMC. Worth a watch as the CEO of ARM, Qualcomm and Nvidia were all on the panel. [2:15]
  • What happened in the Google and HTC deal?  [4:30]
• Toshiba Deal [7:10]
  • Can you offer an overview of Toshiba and the chip unit which they have been trying to sell? [9:35]
  • Why is the Toshiba chip unit such an asset that it attracted so many bidders? [11:58]
  • Can you give a quick chronology of this whole acquisition deal and why has it attracted so much attention? [14:49]
  • Who are the three key bidders of the Toshiba chip unit and what’s the motivation within each one of them to get this deal done? [16:40]
  • The fact that Apple is part of the coalition with every bidder, why is this so? What’s Apple’s interest in this chip unit? (They have bought this outright but instead choose to work with the bidders). [19:00]
  • The end state now is that Toshiba only sold 49.9% to the Bain consortium, with itself holding 40.2% and Hoya owning 9.9%, so what’s the end-game going to be for each one of them? [24:29]
  • References: Tim Culpan, “A Yard Sale may save Toshiba’s chips” “Toshiba should keep their chip unit”, “Start the bidding war, Toshiba” and “Toshiba’s chip trick”

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The show is hosted by Bernard Leong (@bernardleong & weibo) and are sponsored by Ideal Workspace (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) with their new Altizen Desk on Indiegogo (Twitter, Facebook, Medium). Also check out Ideal Workspace’s new standing desk, Altizen and sign up for their mailing list. Sound credits for the intro music: Taro Iwashiro, “The Beginning” from Red Cliff Soundtrack.