Toshiba has appointed two directors from activist hedge funds to its board possibly paving the way to a sale of the company to private equity.

The two directors are: Nabeel Bhanji, a senior portfolio manager at Elliott Management, and Eijiro Imai, managing director at Farallon Capital Management.

One of the major issues that we’ve had as a company is a lack of trust between our large shareholders and management, and this was an attempt to address that,” said nomination committee chairman Raymond Zage.

Farallon and Elliott together have around 10% of Toshiba with activist shareholders having a total if 25%. Toshiba said this month it had received eight initial buyout proposals.

They are reported to gave come from KKR, Baring Private Equity Asia, Blackstone,, Bain Capital, Brookfield Asset Management, MBK Partners, Apollo Global Management and CVC Capital Partners. A buyout could cost up to €22 billion.

Jerry Black, chairman of Toshiba’s strategic review committee, said that the committee had no predetermined view of whether a buyout by private equity would be a good way to go

By: DocMemory
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