Westinghouse Electric Company parent Toshiba Corp. of Japan said Monday it would spit itself into four wholly owned subsidiaries by the end of the year in reaction to severe losses in its nuclear power division and as a way to “support maximization of their business value.”
Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on March 29. Toshiba has since said the filing could affect the company's four domestic nuclear power plant projects, including the Plant Vogtle expansion project in Georgia and the V.C. Summer expansion project in South Carolina. Both of those projects involve construction of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. An additional four AP1000 reactors are currently under construction in China.
Toshiba has said it lost $4.8 billion through the first three quarters of the 2016 fiscal year, including billions of dollars lost through Westinghouse. The company has also said “several billion” had been lost through Westinghouse's 2015 purchase of nuclear plant construction firm CBI Stone & Webster.
Toshiba said creating the new subsidiaries would take place in two steps. On July 1, it would create subsidiaries named Infrastructure System, Storage & Electronic Devices and Industrial Information and Communication Technology. Then, as of Oct. 1, it wold create the Energy Systems & Solutions Company with the Nuclear Energy Systems & Solutions Division.
Company shares rose more than 1 percent on the stock exchange in Japan as Toshiba announced its intentions, but finished the day higher by 0.39 percent. On the year, Toshiba shares are down more than 26 percent.