A consortium led by Bain Capital has made a revised last-ditch offer for Toshiba's chip unit worth about $18 billion, bringing in Apple to help bolster its bid, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The new offer comes as separate sources say the embattled Japanese conglomerate and Western Digital are struggling to strike a deal ahead of their self-imposed deadline of Thursday.

Toshiba has been scrambling to sell its flash memory unit - the world's No. 2 producer of NAND chips - to cover billions in losses at its bankrupt U.S. nuclear business Westinghouse.

The revised offer is worth some 2 trillion yen ($18.2 billion). Bain and South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix will be responsible for 1.1 trillion yen, while Apple will provide up to 400 billion yen and Japanese banks will give around 600 billion yen in support.

Toshiba's relationship with Western Digital, its joint venture partner for its chip business, has been rocky throughout the auction process - to the point that other bidders were favored first while the U.S. firm has also initiated legal action that threatens to derail any deal that does not have its consent. People familiar with Toshiba and Western Digital are bickering over the size of any potential stake to be held by the U.S. firm in the chip unit. For now, Western Digital plans to invest only through convertible bonds.

But Toshiba wants to reach a deal soon and it is not clear if it will give serious consideration to Bain's new proposal.

Failure to clinch a deal in the next few weeks could mean that it may not clear all necessary regulatory approvals by the end of the financial year in March. That would likely lead to Toshiba reporting negative net worth for two years in a row, increasing its chances of being delisted.

Source: fortune