Toshiba asks regulators for extension on financial filing

[TOKYO] Toshiba Corp said on Friday it has asked regulators for an extension for filing its annual financial statement by over a month as it has not been able to obtain approval from its auditor.

The industrial conglomerate was aiming to file the financial report by the legally specified deadline of June 30, but now said it wants an extension until Aug 10 due partly to a prolonged accounting investigation involving its now bankrupt Westinghouse nuclear unit.

The Japanese company said it expects to complete all necessary accounting procedures for the annual statement by the end of July.

Failure to meet the end-June deadline without an extension would have put the troubled Japanese conglomerate's stock exchange listing in further jeopardy.

Toshiba has been on the Tokyo bourse's supervision list since mid-March as it has failed to clear up concerns about its internal controls after a 2015 accounting scandal.

Even if Toshiba manages to submit the financial statement by the extended deadline, however, the company still needs to dig itself out of negative shareholders' equity by the end of March next year in order to stay listed.

Scrambling for a cash injection, Toshiba has chosen a consortium of Bain Capital and Japanese government investors as the preferred bidder for its flash memory chip business, aiming to seal a deal worth some US$18 billion by next week.

But prospects for a clean early resolution to the sale of the world's No. 2 producer of NAND flash chips remain unclear as Western Digital Corp, Toshiba's chips business partner, has launched legal action to prevent a deal without its consent.

REUTERS

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