Toshiba to delist from Japanese stock exchange
english.kyodonews.net
english.kyodonews.net
At one point they were a pretty well respected company and then they ran into the same issue that most conglomerates run into in that different parts of their business get different multiples and that often leads investors to give them the multiple of the lowest yielding portion of their business.
To help boost their stock price in the early 2010's they started to fudge their books and were caught and fined in the mid 2010's, I think it was over $6B in fines to indicate just how far they went to fudge their numbers.
After this they had alot of interest from activist investors as nothing attracts an activist investor like an old bumbling conglomerate. Its literally the typical hedge fund target/playbook.
- old company that has lost its way
- scandals affecting the companies books
- conglomerate that can be broken up and sold for pieces to unlock higher multiples in the market.
Now, instead of the activist hedge fund treatment, it will get the private equity treatment, where they'll break the company up but keep the name and spin the company back out in 5-10 years once they've sold off the divisions that can quickly make the investors money.
in the end the market determined that the activists were right and the company was way to big and diversified to be effective.
Sadly instead of the public benefiting from this breakup due to a bump in the share price and dividends being paid out from the breakup it will be a consortium of banks and other companies that benefit from this.
Westinghouse negotiated fixed price contracts to construct nuclear reactors and Toshiba provided financial guarantees, so they ended up on the hook for massive cost over-runs. In 2017 alone, Westinghouse reported an annual loss of $9bn. and declared themselves bankrupt.
Toshiba had to sell a load of businesses over the years to escape the Westinghouse black hole and repair their balance sheet.
Cameco is the second largest uranium producer in the world. Brookfield Renewable Partners owns and operates a lot of power generation. Both are Canadian where there is a huge pool of both power generation and specifically nuclear power generation talent and experience. As an example until 2016 Canada had the largest operator nuclear power facility in the world, several provinces are currently in the planning phases of SMRs, and Canada will be financing CANDU reactors in Romania.
It's safe to say they see some sort of advantageous vertical integration of the supply chain, as well as believing regulatory and economic outlooks being good.
This is WILD because it came up as part of an agreement 20 years ago because it was discovered that Toshiba had put a backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives. Basically the US told Japan, either we release what Toshiba did, or you put our Navy guys (I only know navy but probably other branches too) on your boats.
Japan agreed, the scandel went away and Toshiba was left to rot as a zombie company.
Maybe your financial reason got them where they are today, but Toshiba was effectivly dead 20 years ago when they screwed over the US and Japanese governments at the same time, crazy that Japan let them zombify for 20 years.
"backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives" is an enormous security concern for all world citizens.
Importantly though they said it was sending data back, THAT was the issue because the navy had used their drives, so basically stealing us gov data.
Military staff would never lie and are also known to be very tech savvy. Story seems legit to me.
perfect! :) The story makes no sense, but as always with conspiracy theories there is a small grain of truth in there. Asianometry: Toshiba’s Big Technology Export Scandal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaRyqAVIkwI
https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Lenovo-banned-Intelligence... https://thehackernews.com/search/label/Lenovo%20Backdoor%20M...
But also keep in mind the NSA has been backdooring and infiltrating both domestic and foreign commercial entities & critical infrastructure for decades. We can't pretend this is shocking.
How can we know this is true, and how would a HDD backdoor even work? What's the exploit here?
Does the firmware on the HDD controller magically connect to the internet via the SATA cable and through the host controller to siphon your data to the Japanese alphabet agencies?
Sounds pretty absurd.
That's ... what I just said.
>An attacker with access to the firmware could manipulate it to create a backdoor.
You can create backdoors for every device, not just HDDs, why should Toshiba be liable here? iPhones and Androids have tonnes of exploits written for them? Are we extorting them too for SW bugs that lead to vulnerabilities?
>This might involve modifying the firmware to allow remote control, unauthorized data access, or other malicious actions
Remote access how? Can I talk to the exploited firmware of your HDD via the internet while magically bypassing firewalls and the OS security? Is that a technically feasible thing or are you just speculating without background knowledge?
Sounds like first you'd need to compromise the firewalls, OS, SATA controller and network layers to let outsiders talk to the compromised HDD firmware via the internet and if the attacker already has that kind of remote access to your system, then you're already screwed and compromised and the HDD firmware is the least of your worries.
Even if remote HDD firmware vulnerabilities are not technically feasible and only work if you get your hands on the HDD, in cyber-secvurity world, if your HDD/laptop/PC is in the hands of the attacker, then you can consider it already compromised regardless of HDD firmware security.
It all sounds like a nothing burgher or pure FUD.
2. That still means you need physical acces to the victim's system to exploit, nothing that can be exploited remotely.
If Toshiba created a malicous firmware with a backdoor they would be liable for the backdoor.
That's a big IF. Where's the proof for that though? Or is it like the imaginary WMDs in Irak?
Backdoors are usually cleverly disguised software bugs specifically to give you deniability if you ever get caught. It's not like the Jupânese agencies would put their names and signatures in the backdoor's firmare image.
I can tell you though, 1,000% EVERY Japanese sdf ship has at least 2 US Navy person on board when deployed. That's a fact.
The US intelligence apparatus discovers that a Japanese company has backdoored all its hard drives which are apparently also installed on USN vessels.
The US, out of benevolence for this non-US company's reputation, I guess, decides to agree to a secret deal with its ally.
The secret deal is that US Navy personnel will be put onto Japanese naval vessels, which in no way remedies the problem of backdoored hard drives that supposedly exist. Random JMSDF captains know the details of this supposedly secret deal and discuss it freely without consequence.
Imagine believing this.
Japan has been a friendly country and valuable Pacific strategic ally for decades. What exactly is the US supposedly gaining here?
Maybe it's more likely there's an exchange program between allied Navies, like there is with dozens of other countries??
> I only got told the story by the commander while we were drinking in our state rooms in the JSDF ship, maybe he was lying?
But you're presenting it here with way more credence than that justifies. This is a conspiracy theory and unsurprisingly this is exactly how they get spread.
1: https://cdn-ak.f.st-hatena.com/images/fotolife/t/topisyu/201... / https://archive.is/4Dyzj
They could be wonderful design but manufactured with some less than stellar materials. Things like that.
Around 3 years in I bought a new HP dv9700 on eBay and it failed within 6 months. HP declined to replace because it was from overseas. I ended up back on the "trusty Toshiba" which yeah I'll be honest it wasn't that bad for a cheap $1000 laptop.
That came at the price of a lot of custom drivers that would rarely make it to the windows defaults, complete lack of backward (sometimes forward) compatibility, and abysmal linux support.
Something new here or are you just wasting our time?
> The bid was intended to allow Toshiba to sever ties with overseas activist shareholders, who it says were only seeking short-term returns.
This combination of facts seems extremely unlikely.
> Tanaka Seisakusho (田中製作所, Tanaka Engineering Works) was the first company established by Tanaka Hisashige, one of the most original and productive inventor-engineers during the Tokugawa / Edo period. Established in July 1875, it was the first Japanese company to manufacture telegraph equipment. It also manufactured switches, and miscellaneous electrical and communications equipment.
appliance /əˈplʌɪəns/ noun 1. a device or piece of equipment designed to perform a specific task. "electrical and gas appliances" 2. BRITISH a fire engine. "three fire appliances were rushed to the scene"
I'm guessing it's electrically performing a specific task, i.e. an electric appliance.