‘WESTERN DIGITAL PLANS TO RAISE TOSHIBA OFFER’

Tokyo: Western Digital Corp plans to raise its offer for Toshiba Corp’s prized semiconductor unit to $18 billion or more, a person familiar with the matter said, in a last-ditch effort to clinch a deal both companies consider vital. The US chipmaker is part of a consortium led by a Japanese governmentbacked fund. The group will present the new offer of 2 trillion yen or more by Thursday, when the struggling Japanese conglomerate is due to choose a preferred bidder for its Toshiba Memory Corp unit, the world’s second-largest producer of NAND memory chips, the person told Reuters on Saturday. Toshiba has been favouring a rival bid from U.S. chipmaker Broadcom Ltd, which has partnered with US private equity firm Silver Lake to offer 2.2 trillion yen, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters. A spokesman for Western Digital had no comment. Toshiba could not immediately be reached for comment. Toshiba had set a 2 trillion yen threshold for the sale as it rushes to find a buyer to cover billions of dollars in cost overruns at its now-bankrupt US nuclear business Westinghouse Electric Corp. The offer by Western Digital, a long-time partner of the laptops-tonuclear conglomerate’s lucrative chips division, comes as uncertainty about the make-up of the groups bidding for Toshiba’s crown jewel has increased. Western Digital has been seen by some sources as crucial to successful deal, as it jointly operates a key flash-memory chip plant with Toshiba in western Japan. But the two companies have been at loggerheads over the auction.