China's Midea Group buys Toshiba's home appliance business

A man walks past the logo of Toshiba Corp in Tokyo September 30, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

GUANGZHOU - China's leading home appliance maker Midea Group announced Wednesday an agreement with Japan's Toshiba Corporation to buy the latter's home appliance business.

Midea will acquire an 80.1 percent stake in Toshiba Lifestyle Products & Services Corporation (TLSC), the home appliance arm of Toshiba, at a price of approximately $473 million. Toshiba will retain a 19.9 percent holding. The business will continue to develop, manufacture and market refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners and other small domestic appliances under the Toshiba brand name.

All employees of TLSC engaged in the business will be kept on. Midea will be licensed to use the Toshiba name worldwide for 40 years and will receive more than 5,000 intellectual property assets and a license to use other home appliance-related intellectual property retained by Toshiba.

"Today is an important landmark in Midea's globalization endeavor. With a strong global home appliance and HVAC business, the addition of Toshiba home appliance, its iconic brand, talented team and leading technologies, will significantly strengthen our competitiveness in Japan, Southeast Asia and the global market," said Fang Hongbo, chairman and president of Midea.

Founded in 1968 in south China's Guangdong province, Midea has established more than 200 subsidiaries globally and nine strategic business units, with 100,000 employees. It reported total revenue over $21 billion in 2015.