[HN Gopher] Toshiba to delist from Japanese stock exchange
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Toshiba to delist from Japanese stock exchange
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 58 points
Date : 2023-10-12 16:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.kyodonews.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.kyodonews.net)
| chollida1 wrote:
| So this is somewhat interesting based on how Toshiba got here.
|
| 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.
| ska wrote:
| the breaking up has been going on for a while, e.g. Canon
| bought their medical line of business back in 2016.
| stg22 wrote:
| In 2006, Toshiba bought Westinghouse Electric Company in one
| of the worst deals in history.
|
| 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.
| christophilus wrote:
| Didn't Brookfield buy Westinghouse? How do they plan on
| avoiding those same risks? Brookfield doesn't strike me as
| the kind of company to repeat that sort of error.
| Tsarbomb wrote:
| Westinghouse is owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners
| and Cameco.
|
| 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.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| I don't think you'll find any of this info online but TOSHIBA
| is the reason the US Navy has active personnel on ALL Japanese
| Self Defense Forces ships. ALWAYS, the US Navy has at least 1-2
| people stationed on JSDF ships (I did 2 tours on a japanese
| boat).
|
| 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.
| quesera wrote:
| How can a discerning reader tell the difference between this
| story and an unsubstantiated rumor?
|
| "backdoor on all Toshiba hard drives" is an enormous security
| concern for all world citizens.
| lokar wrote:
| What would a HDD "back door" even consist of 20+ years ago?
| kylebenzle wrote:
| No idea, 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?
|
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> No idea, 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?_
|
| Military staff would never lie and are also known to be
| very tech savvy. Story seems legit to me.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| You can't, I guess that's the nature of dissiminating top
| secret information on the Internet, don't believe me, or
| use it as a jumping off point and look it up, I don't care,
| just telling you want happened. I could give a few more
| details but that's the interesting part
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| I think they mean the machines' OS was backdoored, not the
| hard drive itself. Happened with Lenovo multiple times,
| could have happened with other manufacturers.
|
| https://thehackernews.com/2013/07/Lenovo-banned-
| Intelligence... https://thehackernews.com/search/label/Leno
| vo%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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> it was discovered that Toshiba had put a backdoor on all
| Toshiba hard drives_
|
| 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.
| hammock wrote:
| Hard drives have firmware and hidden partitions. An
| attacker with access to these could manipulate them to
| create a backdoor which allows remote control, data access,
| etc.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> HDDs have firmware._
|
| 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.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Some SSDs understand partition tables and file systems to
| trim/discard their flash "automagically", so it would be
| possible for firmware to manipulate e.g. OS components
| stored on the disk to introduce a backdoor. The hard
| drive has plenty of storage space for that.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| 1. We're talking about HDDs from 20 years ago, not SSDs.
| Different beasts entirely.
|
| 2. That still means you need physical acces to the
| victim's system to exploit, nothing that can be exploited
| remotely.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >why should Toshiba be liable here?
|
| If Toshiba created a malicous firmware with a backdoor
| they would be liable for the backdoor.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 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 Jupanese agencies would put
| their names and signatures in the backdoor's firmare
| image.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| They said it "sent data" back to Japan, that was the issue,
| the basically got caught stealing us gov data, and this was
| 20 years ago. So I have no idea.
| fidotron wrote:
| Toshiba-US relations have a far more serious foundational
| problem than that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiba-
| Kongsberg_scandal
| AnonymousPlanet wrote:
| Do you have any sources for your claim that there are always
| US Navy personnel on JSDF ships?
| esafak wrote:
| tl,dr:
|
| > The bid was intended to allow Toshiba to sever ties with
| overseas activist shareholders, who it says were only seeking
| short-term returns.
| malfist wrote:
| Sure that's their stated reasoning. But in terms of seeking
| short term gain and ignoring long term costs, I don't think
| there's much, if an difference between activist investors and
| private equity
| systems wrote:
| my first laptop was a toshiba, they used to be one of the best
| laptop makers at some point
| racl101 wrote:
| Same here.
| pengaru wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/toshiba-chairman...
|
| http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/tarhuni1/
| jeffbee wrote:
| > Toshiba, one of Japan's leading companies, was founded in 1875.
| It started as an electric appliance maker...
|
| This combination of facts seems extremely unlikely.
| o11c wrote:
| Clicking through a few Wikipedia articles, we get [1]:
|
| > Tanaka Seisakusho (Tian Zhong Zhi Zuo Suo , 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.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanaka_Seisakusho
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I dunno a lot of Japanese companies have old history like that.
| Nintendo is also from the 1800s, and started in playing cards.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| I think they mean that if it was founded in 1875 it couldn't
| have originally been making electrical appliances but that
| appears to be incorrect because according to Japanese
| Wikipedia the origin of the company was hisashige Tanaka
| establishing a telegraph equipment factory in Ginza in 1875
| charcircuit wrote:
| In Japan the PC market evolved out of the electric appliance
| market.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| September news. Not even clear if "Thursday" is today or from
| back then. Weird.
|
| Something new here or are you just wasting our time?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37593719
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37597214
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37606935
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The date of the market delisting, which was not announced
| previously.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Not all companies should go public. Lego is a classic example.
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