The long-running corporate drama at Toshiba is having another nail-biting showdown. A victory for activist investors would be a positive signal at a company that has become a bellwether for progress on governance at Japan Inc. A win for management might mean that future dividends from reform prove more paltry than hoped.
The beleaguered Japanese industrial giant said Monday that it would hold a nonbinding shareholder vote next month on its proposal to split the company into two. Toshiba said the plan, announced last week, would be faster and more efficient than its earlier proposal of a three-way split. Under the original plan, Toshiba would have been split into a device company, an infrastructure unit and a company holding its stake in flash-memory company Kioxia. The new plan would just spin off its device business into a separate company.
