Apple consortium offers $18 billion for Toshiba memory division

A consortium including Apple and SK Hynix has reportedly bid $18 billion for Toshiba’s nand division. The Japanese company has been selling the division for some time now and it looked like Western Digital would buy the branch.

The consortium is led by investor Bain Capital, reports Reuters news agency, which has the information from anonymous sources. In addition to the investor, Japanese banks are also participating. Bain and SK Hynix are putting together about half the amount for the offer, while Apple would like to put about $3.6 billion on the table.

Toshiba has been in talks for some time with Western Digital, the former partner in a joint venture for the memory sector. Toshiba worked with SanDisk until WD acquired SanDisk last year. WD would have offered not to take control of the nand division after the acquisition.

Toshiba spun off its nand memory production into a separate company called Toshiba Memory on April 1, and is selling this part because it is experiencing financial difficulties after a series of setbacks. After Samsung, Toshiba is currently the world’s largest manufacturer of nand memory.