The Japanese press – first Yomiuri, now Nikkei – reports the news that is coming soon the final phase of the negotiation of Toshiba to sell the big appliance business. According to Nikkei, it is about to be sold to the Chinese Midea Group. Toshiba division must manage a serious accounting problem that had led in May of last year to the postponement of the 2015 balance sheet presentation (financial year ended on March 31st 2015) and in July to the resignations of the chief executive Hisao Tanaka and of other seven out of the 16 board members. At the end of the year, Toshiba had announced a significant reorganization with 6,800 overstaffing (of them, 3,700, corresponding to 80% of the total, in the TV set manufacturing division, for at a loss). Still at the end of 2015, the chief executive Masashi Muromachi, in an interview to the daily paper Sankei Shimbun, had anticipated the decision of selling household appliance and personal computer businesses.
