Bain Capital’s $18bn purchase of Toshiba Memory — one of history’s biggest outbound deals by US private equity — is at risk of being derailed by President Donald Trump’s trade dispute with China, said people close to the situation.
Bankers and lawyers familiar with the matter said Mr Trump’s March 22 announcement of $60bn in new tariffs on Chinese imports represented “terrible timing” for US-headquartered private equity house Bain, which last year led a consortium to buy Toshiba’s highly profitable semiconductor unit, the world’s second-largest producer of Nand flash memory chips.
One adviser to the deal raised concerns that the deal could become “collateral damage” in the US-China trade dispute.