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Panasonic Said to Offer to Buy Rest of Shares of Sanyo, Panasonic Electric
By Maki Shiraki and Mariko Yasu - Jul 28, 2010
Panasonic Corp. will offer to buy the shares of Sanyo Electric Co. and Panasonic Electric Works Co. it doesn’t own, three people familiar with the matter said, .

The companies will make an announcement today, the people said, declining to provide financial details and asking not to be identified before the public disclosure. Panasonic may offer more than 900 billion yen ($10 billion) to buy the shares this year, the Nikkei newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information.

Panasonic tumbled to the lowest in more than a year in Tokyo trading on concern the cost of the purchase may strain a company reeling from two years of losses. Full control of the world’s largest rechargeable-battery maker and Japan’s biggest producer of electrical fittings may help Panasonic compete against Samsung Electronics Co. and Sony Corp.

“Making them wholly-owned can cut off redundancies of operations and speed up management decisions,” said Yasuo Nakane, a Deutsche Bank AG analyst based in Tokyo. “This decision came out earlier than people anticipated because expectations were that this would happen next year.”

Sanyo surged as much as 24 percent to 146 yen as of 10:05 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, while Panasonic, the world’s largest maker of plasma televisions, declined as much as 6.5 percent to 1,091 yen. Panasonic Electric Works shares were untraded as bids to buy outnumbered offers to sell.

Panasonic isn’t the source of the information for the report, Panasonic said in a statement today. Sanyo and Panasonic Electrics Works issued similar comments.

The Nikkei reported Panasonic plans to conduct a tender offer or stock swap for the remaining shares. It’s considering a capital increase to fund the acquisitions, according to the report.

Panasonic plans to sell off or shut Sanyo’s unprofitable businesses such as home appliances to focus on rechargeable batteries and solar panels, according to the report.