Toshiba draws back from fab foundry lock-out foolishness

The latest twist in the Toshiba Memory Business auction sale is that Toshiba has not barred access to the foundry or its online facilities from partner WDC employees. The flash foundry is jointly owned by Toshiba and WDC, with Toshiba wanting to include its share in an auction of its Memory Business to raise billions of yen in …

[Michael Strorm]

"There is speculation that Japanese multi-national business Sharp could join with Hon Hai to lessen the China association"

Didn't Foxconn (i.e. a Chinese company) buy Sharp just over a year ago?

[ckm5]

Foxconn is Taiwanese

Taiwanese != Chinese (at least not in the vernacular sense)

"Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., trading as Foxconn Technology Group, is a Taiwanese multinational electronics contract manufacturing company headquartered in New Taipei City, Taiwan." source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

[handleoclast]

Re: Taiwanese != Chinese

For now.

If China ever gets its way, Taiwan will become a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China.

[Michael Strorm]

Re: Foxconn is Taiwanese

@ckm5; Ah, my mistake- I was mis-remembering that they were (mainland) Chinese because they're well known for having large numbers of factories there.

[eldakka]

/pedant mode on.

The flash foundry is jointly owned by Toshiba and WDC,

The foundry, and the JV, are not jointly owned with WDC. It is Sandisk and Toshiba who own the foundry/JV.

Sandisk the corporation still exists, and all the contractual terms around the JV are between Toshiba and Sandisk. Sandisk is a wholly owned subsidiary of WDC, therefore WDC directs Sandisk what to do, but it is still between Toshiba and Sandisk.

Therefore Toshiba could have locked out WDC employees from the site, but not Sandisk employees, as, legally, they are different entities.

[NAND_guy]

However true it is that "Taiwanese != Chinese", Foxconn has strong Chinese ties and contacts.