Toshiba’s board has agreed to sell its prized Nand flash memory chip unit to an international consortium led by the US private equity group Bain Capital in a ¥2.1tn ($18.9bn) deal designed to rescue the Japanese conglomerate from delisting.

东芝(Toshiba)董事会以180亿美元将其宝贵的闪存芯片业务Nand出售给一个由美国私人股本集团贝恩资本(Bain Capital)牵头的国际财团，旨在挽救这家日本集团免于退市。

People close to the winning group, which includes an investment of at least a $3bn by Apple and smaller commitments from Dell, Seagate, Kingston and the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, said they were in the process of ironing out minor details but were likely to sign the deal later on Wednesday.

该财团包括苹果(Apple)至少30亿美元的投资，还有来自戴尔(Dell)、希捷科技(Seagate Technology)、金士顿(Kingston)和韩国芯片制造商SK海力士(SK Hynix)的较小规模投资。

Toshiba’s board has come under intense pressure from the company’s biggest lenders, a trio of Japanese banks, to sell its prized asset ahead of a March 2018 deadline. The groups needs the proceeds to plug a huge hole in its shareholder equity created by massive writedowns on its US nuclear business.

东芝董事会一直面临着来自该公司最大贷款银行的巨大压力：日本三家银行要求东芝在2018年3月最后期限之前出售其宝贵资产。它们需要用出售所得来堵住东芝美国核业务大规模减记造成的股东权益的巨大缺口。

The scale of the writedowns, coupled with the aftermath of a 2015 accounting scandal at Toshiba, have put one of Japan’s most famous industrial conglomerates at risk of being delisted from the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

大规模资产减记再加上东芝2015年会计丑闻的余波，让这家日本最知名的工业集团之一有可能从东京证交所( Tokyo Stock Exchange)退市。

Analysts say the sale of the chip unit should remove that threat, though the actual completion of the deal is expected to be delayed by both anti-trust scrutiny and a raft of legal action launched by Toshiba’s joint venture partner in the chip-making business, US group Western Digital.

分析人士表示，该芯片业务的出售应会消除这种威胁，不过由于反垄断审查以及东芝芯片制造合资公司的合作伙伴美国西部数据(Western Digital)提起诸多法律诉讼，预计这笔出售交易的实际完成日期将推迟。

Two Japanese state-backed financial institutions — the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and the Development Bank of Japan — will join as investors once Toshiba and the winning consortium have settled legal differences over a joint venture with Western Digital.

一旦获胜财团解决了与西部数据合资公司有关的法律分歧，两家得到政府支持的日本金融机构——日本产业革新机构(Innovation Network Corporation of Japan)和日本开发银行(Development Bank of Japan)将加盟入股。

A rival bid from the Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn was described by people close to the process as “highly competitive until very late in the day”.

据知情人士称，来自台湾科技巨头富士康(Foxconn)的竞标“直到当天最后一刻都极具竞争力”。