Japanese electronics and technology manufacturer Toshiba has accepted a 2 trillion yen ($15 billion) tender offer from Japan Industrial Partners, a buyout fund made up of major banks and companies.
If the proposal goes through, it would be a major step in Toshiba's years-long turnaround effort, allowing it to go private and delist from the Tokyo Stock Exchange. But active overseas investors own a significant portion of Toshiba's shares.
Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp. announced its board accepted the bid at 4,620 yen ($36) per share, after trading closed in Tokyo late Thursday. Toshiba closed at 4,213 yen ($32) per share on Thursday and rose 4.2% to 4,390 yen ($34) on Friday.
The move comes at a time when the market is reeling over the effects of the recent collapse of banks in the US.
The purchase will combine Toshiba's Japanese business with Japanese partners.
But on Tuesday, Google temporarily broke away from that as it released a chatbot called Bard. The new A.I. Google executives said in an interview that the chatbot will be available to a limited number of users in the United States and the United Kingdom and will accommodate additional users, countries, and languages over time.
The cautious rollout is the company's first public effort to tackle the recent chatbot craze driven by OpenAI and Microsoft, and aims to show that Google is capable of delivering similar technology. . But Google is taking a much more cautious approach than its rivals, who have faced criticism for promoting an unpredictable and sometimes unreliable technology.
