Honeywell, Goldman, CVC Said to Bid for Toshiba's Landis+Gyr

(Bloomberg) -- Toshiba Corp.’s Landis+Gyr has received offers from bidders including Honeywell International Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s private equity arm and a consortium of buyout firm CVC Capital Partners and Hitachi Ltd., people familiar with the matter said.

BC Partners and Canada’s Onex Corp. have also made first-round offers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The next bids may be due as soon as July, one of the people said.

Toshiba and the Innovation Network Corp. of Japan bought Landis+Gyr in 2011 for $2.3 billion including debt. The Zug, Switzerland-based maker of so-called smart electricity meters, is on the block again as Toshiba sells assets following the bankruptcy of its Westinghouse Electric nuclear business, which the company has said may force it to report a record loss for the fiscal year ended March 31.

Toshiba owns a 60 percent stake in Landis+Gyr and INCJ holds the rest. Representatives for INCJ, Honeywell, CVC, Hitachi and BC Partners declined to comment. Goldman Sachs and Onex didn’t immediately respond to requests.

“Toshiba is considering strategic alternatives, including an IPO for Landis+Gyr, however, nothing concrete has been decided at this point,” spokesman Hirokazu Tsukimoto said by email.

The auction is proceeding even after CVC and Hitachi attempted to preempt the bidding with an offer earlier this year, people familiar with the talks said in April. INCJ may remain a shareholder after the sale, one of the people had said.

--With assistance from Thomas Black Scott Deveau Chris Cooper Pavel Alpeyev and Takako Taniguchi

To contact the reporters on this story: Sarah Syed in London at ssyed35@bloomberg.net, Aaron Kirchfeld in London at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net, Eyk Henning in Frankfurt at ehenning1@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Aaron Kirchfeld at akirchfeld@bloomberg.net, Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, Amy Thomson, Michael Hytha