Following huge loss recorded in its business, indications have emerged that Toshiba technology, one of the world’s biggest electronics company based in Japan, is about to collapse.
The company which introduced millions of people around the world to high-end TVs and laptops, issued a warning this week, that there is “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business, saying its loss for the year ended in March could hit 1 trillion yen ($9 billion).
But the industrial giant — whose businesses employ roughly 190,000 people around the world — is too important for Japan to let it collapse, analysts say.
More than 100,000 of the conglomerate’s employees are in Japan, some of them in key industries.
Toshiba is pulling out of the nuclear construction sector, the root cause of its current financial debacle.
Its troubled U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse Electric filed for bankruptcy last month, and will eventually be removed from the Japanese company’s books, leaving a thick trail of red ink.
But Toshiba still has a significant nuclear business in Japan. It does decommissioning work at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the site of a major nuclear disaster after the powerful earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011.
And the Japanese government has a track record of stepping in to save major companies that are in trouble.
Toshiba is “too big” for Japan to allow it to go under, said Kazunori Ito, an analyst with research firm Ibbotson Associates Japan.
