Toshiba, Western Digital Close to Settling Dispute: Report

Toshiba and Western Digital are said to be close to settling their legal dispute, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.

Under an agreement, Western Digital will drop efforts to block the Japanese company's $18 billion sale of its flash-memory business in exchange for the extension of their joint venture agreements, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Western Digital and Toshiba were not immediately available for comment.

Western Digital in October had rejected demands from Toshiba Corp to drop a set of legal rights that would allow the US company to block Toshiba's $18 billion sale of its memory chip unit to SK Hynix.

Earlier this month, Toshiba said it had not entered into talks with any company to sell its personal computer business, denying media reports that it was in negotiations to sell the unit to Taiwan's Asustek Computer.

China's Lenovo Group Ltd has also expressed interest in the PC unit, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Cash-strapped Toshiba has previously said it is looking to sell the PC business, a small part of the industrial conglomerate, as it races to bolster its balance sheet by the end of March to avoid a possible delisting.

The PC business accounted for just 3.5 percent of Toshiba's net revenue in April-September of JPY 84.1 billion ($747 million).