Failure to get approval would be vastly beneficial to Toshiba because it could then keep or IPO the unit, or IPO a part of the unit and still retain control.

It is thought that an IPO would value the unit at several billions more than the $18 billion Bain-Hynix bid. Hon Hai had offered nearly $30 billion in the bidding process.

However Toshiba may simply decide not to sell the memory unit and that decidion may be taken by its new CEO Nobuaki Kurumatani, a banker from Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group who ran the Japanese operations of private equity group CVC. Kurumatani takes over on April 1st. The current CEO, Satoshi Tsunakawa, becomes COO.

“This company has a long and impressive record of creating new technologies and turning them into massive businesses and I see my most important responsibility as reactivating this DNA,” says Kurumatani.

Toshiba has now raised all the money it needs to cover the liabilities of its nuclear unit which were the catalyst for the sale of the memory unit. The company is now expected to mske a $4.9 billion profit for the year ending March 31st. All the profit will come from the memory unit.

National regulators will be relieved if Toshiba retains control of the unit because the Bain-Hynix bid is structured in an opaque way which could be a Trojan Horse for Hynix to gain control of the Toshiba unit.

That would reduce the number of significant NAND producers to three – Samsung, Hynix and Micron. And then, memory prices would likely rise even more than they have done