Sanyo negotiates selling its mobile phone unit to Kyocera

Being in financial crisis, Sanyo Electric Co. is about to sell its mobile phone unit to its competitor Kyocera Corp. Declaring the yesterday negotiations, the both companies did not state any details for the deal, whose bid Nikkei estimated at 70 billion yen (US$597 million; €422 million).Despite making mainly electronic components, Sanyo is closely related to mobile-phone business through its close ties to KDDI Corp., whose phone manufacturer for the Japanese market and largest shareholder is Kyocera Corp. The coming deal proves that the huge last year bailout in Sanyo (300 billion yen; US$2.56 billion; €1.81 billion) was not in vain. The Ouster of Sanyo’s former president due to his decline to make any major changes was the milestone that marked the beginning of a new period in its history. For that time it commenced series of negotiations for selling or auctioning several of its losses inflicting business branches, the yesterday negotiations were only part of. As a result the company expects first group net profit for the last four years. Further sales and cuts are expected to be announced in November 2007.

source: theWSJ