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Tokyo (dpa) - One week after a takeover offer for the Japanese technology group Toshiba by a financial investor from Europe was announced, CEO Nobuaki Kurumatani has surprisingly resigned.

The company did not provide any information on the reasons on Wednesday.

In a communication it was only stated that the board of directors had accepted the resignation, which took effect with immediate effect.

According to media reports, there has been a dispute in the management over the takeover offer of the European financial investor CVC Capital Partners.

This is said to have offered the equivalent of $ 21 billion (17.7 billion euros) for Toshiba, as it became known last week.

Among members of the board of directors, but also among shareholders, the offer was viewed as too low, it said.

They were hoping for a higher offer from other investors.

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Kurumatani, who has now resigned, previously worked for the bidder CVC and was responsible for the Asia-Pacific region.

Board member Satoshi Tsunakawa was appointed to succeed him.

The 65-year-old has been with Toshiba since 1979.

Last week, the company announced that it would carefully examine the CVC offer.

Now it was said that an evaluation of the offer is currently not possible.

The takeover by a non-Japanese bidder would have to be approved by the Tokyo government with reference to national security.

Since Toshiba is active in strategic areas such as defense and nuclear power, such a transaction would be very carefully examined.

The group of companies founded in 1875 is one of the best-known names in the Japanese economy.

However, a disastrous foray into the US nuclear power business and a balance sheet scandal brought Toshiba to the brink of the abyss in the middle of the last decade.

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After the scandal - according to a commission of inquiry, the company had inflated its net profit for seven years through accounting trickery - and the bankruptcy of Westinghouse Electric in the USA, the former model company posted heavy losses.

A tough renovation followed.

© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210414-99-198931 / 2

Communication from Toshiba