Goodwill hurting

15 February 2017 By Quentin Webb

Toshiba took a $6 bln writedown after terrible dealmaking. Brewer Kirin has ended a disastrous foray into Brazil. And NTT just took a big impairment charge. These past mishaps, though, don’t seem to deter Japanese bosses – like SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son – from shopping abroad.

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SoftBank Group on Feb. 14 said it had agreed to buy Fortress Investment Group for $3.3 billion in cash. The purchase price of $8.08 per share represents a premium of almost 39 percent over the prior day's closing price of the New York-based private equity and asset management firm.

Toshiba will take a 713 billion yen ($6.3 billion) writedown on its U.S. nuclear business, and expects to make a full-year loss of 390 billion yen, the Japanese electronics group said on Feb. 14.

The group forecast shareholder equity would be a negative 150 billion yen at its financial year-end in March, before any capital raising. It said it was considering selling a majority stake in its NAND flash-memory business. Toshiba also said Chairman Shigenori Shiga would step down.

A day earlier, Dutch brewer Heineken agreed to buy the loss-making Brazilian unit of Japan's Kirin for 664 million euros ($705 million). Including debt, the takeover gives the unit an enterprise value of about 1.0 billion euros.

On Feb. 10, Japanese telecoms operator NTT Group said it had taken a 48.8 billion yen ($430 million) goodwill impairment charge against the value of South African subsidiary Dimension Data. NTT bought the unit in 2010 for $3.2 billion.

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