Japan's ailing electronic giant Sharp Corp. announced on Thursday that it would accept a roughly 660 billion yen (5.9 billion U.S. dollars) take-over bid by Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. from China's Taiwan.
The decision was made with a unanimous vote by Sharp's 13-member board after a two-day meeting in which the competing offers from Hon Hai and the state-backed Innovation Network Corporation of Japan (INCJ) were weighted.
Hon Hai, also known as Foxconn, is a major contractor to Apple Inc.. It has offered to invest around 500 billion yen in Sharp through purchase of new shares, and also purchase Sharp's preferred shares held by its creditor banks for about 100 billion yen. As a result, Hon Hai would own around 66 percent of Sharp.
The INCJ, for its part, had planned to rescue Sharp by 300 billion yen in investment and a 200 billion yen credit line.
The fund also planned spin off Sharp's money-losing LCD business and integrate it with Japan Display Inc., in which INCJ has a stake.
Motoo Hayashi, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister of the government, said he believed that Sharp preferred Hon Hai's offer over the INCJ's after "considering them from various perspectives."
Hon Hai said on the same day in a statement that it will delay signing the deal until it can clarify the content of a document that it received from Sharp on Wednesday, and it hopes to be able to clear up the matter as soon as possible.
The Taiwanese company said Sharp had included new terms in the document and it had responded to Sharp on Wednesday that the content needed to be clarified before a deal could be signed.
Osaka-based Sharp is one of the major electronics makers in Japan.
In recent years, Sharp's finances deteriorated in face of intense international competition. For the April-December period, Sharp posted a group net loss of 108.33 billion yen, much bigger than its 7.16 billion yen loss a year earlier.(1 yen equals 0.0089 U.S. dollars)
