In a prelude to an easing of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, Chinese officials ended a monthslong delay by approving Toshiba’s sale of a majority stake in its lucrative microchip unit to an American-led group.
A lack of approval by Chinese regulators had held up the deal in what was widely seen as a signal from Beijing about how it might punish American businesses if the Trump administration acted on threats to impose tariffs on $150 billion in Chinese-made goods.
In a statement on Thursday, Toshiba said it had received “all required antitrust approvals” for the deal with a consortium led by the United States investment firm Bain Capital. Bain confirmed in its own statement that Chinese authorities had approved the deal.
Chinese officials could not be reached for comment late Thursday, and the country’s official media and websites were silent on the matter. The reasons for the approval after the lengthy delay were not immediately clear.
The approval was likely to be seen as a positive sign by the Trump administration, and it hinted at the two countries’ efforts to defuse tensions over trade issues. A senior Chinese government official, Liu He, is in Washington for trade talks this week.
The approval of the Toshiba deal came just days after the White House appeared to make its own peace offering to Beijing.
President Trump, in a surprise tweet on Sunday, said he had asked American officials to find a way to help ZTE, a Chinese telecommunications company. Officials in Washington last month prohibited United States companies from selling much-needed technology to ZTE to punish the Chinese company for violating American sanctions against selling goods made in the United States to Iran, North Korea and other countries. ZTE’s factories ground to a halt, spurring anger from Beijing.
China’s approval raised questions about another big deal before antitrust regulators: Qualcomm’s $44 billion acquisition of NXP Semiconductors, a company based in the Netherlands. That deal has also been delayedpending Chinese approval, stirring speculation that Beijing was looking for ways to warn Washington of the potential consequences of a full-blown trade war.
The approval of the Toshiba deal will probably come as a major relief for the Japanese conglomerate, which once symbolized the country’s technological might but more recently has been scrambling to survive.
After months of difficult negotiations, Toshiba reached an agreement in September to sell most of its microchip business to a group led by Bain. The deal would give Toshiba $14 billion in cash it desperately needs after a bad bet on nuclear power. Toshiba officials could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
The Toshiba chip business had been one of the company’s crown jewels. The unit makes a type of microchip, called NAND flash memory, that cellphones and digital devices use to store data. The business is profitable and attracted considerable interest from buyers.
Bain and Toshiba are not Chinese companies, but antitrust regulators in China still had considerable say over whether the deal would go through. Like American and European regulators, Chinese antimonopoly officials can punish foreign companies through fines or other measures if they believe a deal beyond China’s borders give the resulting business too much market power.
China has been flexing those relatively new regulatory muscles in recent years as it becomes a major consumer of the world’s goods.
