In this Jan. 30, 2017, photo, a man walks past an advertisement of Toshiba Corp.'s products in Tokyo. Japanese electronics and energy giant Toshiba delayed reporting its financial results by a month Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 TOKYO (AP) — Toshiba Corp.'s chairman resigned Tuesday after the company logged such massive losses in its nuclear business that it must sell its lucrative computer-chip business to avoid going belly-up. 
 
 The company projected a 712.5 billion yen ($6.3 billion) loss for its nuclear business related to the acquisition of CB&I Stone & Webster by its U.S. nuclear unit Westinghouse. The company also said it will not take on new projects to construct nuclear plants. 
 
 President Satoshi Tsunakawa said the company also was looking for potential partners to acquire a stake in Westinghouse. 
 
 He bowed deeply at a news conference to apologize for "troubling investors and stakeholders." 
 
 Earlier Tuesday, Toshiba delayed reporting its official financial results by a month, citing auditing problems. That sent Toshiba stock tumbling 8 percent in Tokyo trading. 
 
 After the market closed, it released unaudited numbers, warning they may change "by a wide margin." 
 
 The company said Shigenori Shiga, the chairman, will step down from the board, effective Wednesday, but stay on as a Toshiba executive. 
 
 Toshiba said its net worth was in the negative, at minus 191 billion yen ($1.7 billion) by the end of last year. The company hopes to fix that by the end of March by selling its flash-memory business and other assets. 
 
 In a stunning acknowledgement, Tsunakawa told reporters the company viewed its move into the nuclear sector by acquiring Westinghouse in 2006 as a misstep that led to its present woes. 
 
 Westinghouse's purchase in 2015 of CB&I Stone & Webster, a nuclear construction and services business, was aimed at winning more business in decontamination, decommissioning and plant projects. But it just amplified that problem. 
 
 Auditors questioned Toshiba's latest reporting on the acquisition of CB&I Stone & Webster after a whistleblower, an employee at Westinghouse, wrote a letter to the Westinghouse president. 
 
 The company said it will reorganize its nuclear business to be directly under Tsunakawa for stricter monitoring. 
 
 It will also focus on reactor maintenance, the nuclear fuel business and decommissioning of the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, where reactors went into multiple meltdowns after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. 
 
 Efficiency moves expected at CB&I Stone & Webster never played out, resulting in a huge overvaluation of the company's worth that led to the huge losses. Toshiba denied it had purposely covered up the problems. 
 
 In its preliminary results, Toshiba said it anticipates a group net loss of 500 billion yen ($4.4 billion) for April-December of last year, including the 712.5 billion yen hit from its nuclear business. 
 
 The company is forecasting a group net loss of 390 billion yen ($3.43 billion) for the full year through March 31, instead of the 145 billion yen profit it had anticipated earlier. 
 
 Toshiba, founded in 1875, employs about 190,000 people and used to be one of the most respected brands of Japan Inc. It still has a sprawling business spanning household appliances, railways, hydrogen energy and elevator systems. 
 
 The company has been grappling in recent years with a scandal over company officials' doctoring of accounting books to meet unrealistic profit targets. 
 
 "It is so unfortunate that this has happened," said Ryoji Sato, a company director, when asked by a reporter about the company's promises to come clean. "We must keep trying to do better." 
 
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 If you want to understand why Toshiba Corp. is about to report a multi-billion dollar write-down on its nuclear reactor business, the story begins and ends with a one-time pipe manufacturer with roots in the swamp country of Louisiana. 
 
 QuickTake Nuclear Power 
 
 The Shaw Group Inc., based in Baton Rouge, looms large in the complex tale of blown deadlines and budgets at four nuclear reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina overseen by Westinghouse Electric Co., a Toshiba subsidiary. 
 
 On Tuesday, Toshiba is expected to announce a massive write-down, perhaps as big as $6.1 billion, to cover cost overruns at Westinghouse, which now owns most of Shaw’s assets. The loss may actually eclipse the $5.4 billion that Toshiba paid for Westinghouse in 2006 and has forced the Japanese industrial conglomerate to put up for sale a significant stake in its prized flash-memory business. Toshiba had to sell off other assets last year following a 2015 accounting scandal. 
 
 Control panel of the AP1000 reactor. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg 
 
 Toshiba made a big bet on a nuclear renaissance that never materialized, in part because it couldn’t build reactors within the timelines and budgets it had promised. The company had anticipated that Westinghouse’s next-generation AP1000 modular reactor design would be easier and faster to execute -- just the opposite of what happened. Now the Japanese company may exit the nuclear reactor construction business altogether and focus exclusively on design and maintenance. 
 
 “There’s billions and billions of dollars at stake here,” says Gregory Jaczko, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). “This could take down Toshiba and it certainly means the end of new nuclear construction in the U.S.” 
 
 Toshiba confirmed it will unveil a “huge loss” on Tuesday; a spokeswoman declined further comment. In January, Satoshi Tsunakawa, Toshiba’s president, said the company may sell shareholdings, real estate or other assets if needed to strengthen its balance sheet. “We will keep considering all options as needed and promptly, and take all necessary steps,” he said at a briefing in Tokyo. 
 
 New Start 
 
 When Toshiba bought Westinghouse a decade ago, the U.S. Congress had just started dangling loan guarantees and other incentives aimed at restarting a dormant nuclear industry. In 2008, Westinghouse signed deals to build four new reactors for utilities Southern Co. and Scana Corp., the first U.S. nuclear plants since the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island to be approved for construction by regulators. 
 
 The Three Mile Island nuclear power station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in Mar. 1979. Source: AP Photo 
 
 In a 2015 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Southern Chief Executive Officer Thomas Fanning said his utility’s two reactor projects at Plant Vogtle in Georgia were “going to be one of the most successful mega-projects in modern American industrial history.” 
 
 To build that mega-project, Westinghouse turned to Shaw, a newcomer to nuclear work. Shaw was founded in 1987 by James Bernhard Jr., who distinguished himself through his deal-making acumen. He got his start paying $50,000 for the assets of a bankrupt pipe fabricator, and grew via one acquisition after another. In 2000, Bernhard swooped in at a bankruptcy auction and, during an 18-hour bidding war, bought Stone & Webster Inc., a once-venerable engineering firm that had already agreed to a deal with a much bigger rival. 
 
 Stone & Webster had built the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s campus and many of the country’s nuclear plants from the 1950s to the 1970s, but it was a shell of its old self when Bernhard bought it. Still, the name gave Shaw new credibility in the nuclear field, which it capitalized on to win all of Westinghouse’s contracts. “They weren’t necessarily qualified, but they had the heart and the go-get-them to take it on,’’ says Jeffrey Kellerman, a retired construction project controller who worked for Shaw at its nuclear sites. 
 
 Bernhard declined to comment for this story. 
 
 Building nuclear reactors is a tall order, given the regulatory complexity and consortium of contractors required to get the job done. And in fairness to Westinghouse and Shaw, plenty of other companies have missed deadlines. “Nuclear construction on-time and on-budget? It’s essentially never happened,’’ said Andrew J. Wittmann, an analyst who covers the industry for Robert W. Baird & Co. 
 
 Thomas Fanning, left, and J.M. Bernhard Jr., right, at the Vogtle site in 2012. Photographer: David Goldman/Pool via AP Photo 
 
 Modular Design 
 
 It’s easy to see why Shaw wanted Toshiba’s business, but harder to understand why Toshiba chose Shaw. More established contractors simply may not have wanted the work, but Bernhard also used his deal-making skills to sweeten the agreement by taking on a chunk of Toshiba’s debts temporarily. “If you want to have a business, you have to get plants up and running, so they went forward even if it wasn’t a perfect match-- that was the calculation for Toshiba,” says David Silver, an analyst at Morningstar in Chicago. 
 
 Westinghouse executives hoped its AP1000 reactors’ main components, or modules, could be built efficiently at specialized work yards, then shipped to a plant site and snapped together like enormous steel-and-concrete Legos. 
 
 On top of that, the U.S. government in 2005 gave nuclear developers a package of tax credits, cost-overrun backstops, and federal loan guarantees. In the next few years, U.S. utilities filed dozens of applications to build new reactors. 
 
 After Westinghouse hired Shaw to handle construction in 2008, it wasn’t long before the company’s work came under scrutiny. By early 2012, NRC inspectors found steel in the foundation of one reactor had been installed improperly. A 300-ton reactor vessel nearly fell off a rail car. The wrong welds were used on nuclear modules and had to be redone. Shaw “clearly lacked experience in the nuclear power industry and was not prepared for the rigor and attention to detail required,’’ Bill Jacobs, who had been selected as the state’s monitor for the project, told the Georgia Public Service Commission in late 2012. 
 
 The troubles were only starting. At Southern’s two new reactors in Georgia -- a massive construction site on the edge of the Savannah River-- thousands of workers have logged more than 25 million man-hours, yet the project is years behind schedule. 
 
 Construction at the Vogtle site in August 2013. Photographer: Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images 
 
 0riginally planned to open in 2016 and 2017, they’re now slated for 2019 and 2020--and that may be a stretch. To hit the new targets, Westinghouse would have to accelerate the pace of work to “over three times the amount that has ever been achieved to date,” Jacobs, the state’s project monitor, told the utility commission last year. 
 
 In November, Westinghouse said 33.4 percent of the construction was complete, but a utility supervisor with Southern who asked not to be identified said he’s skeptical. The hardest part of the project – the reactor’s center – has just started, he said. 
 
 Shaw Acquisition 
 
 Just as problems began to surface, in July 2012 Shaw agreed to sell itself for $3.3 billion to Chicago Bridge & Iron Co., a much larger engineering firm that wanted in on the envisioned nuclear renaissance. But three years later, with little progress to show for itself, CB&I decided to cut its losses. It sold the bulk of Shaw’s assets to Toshiba for $229 million, accepting the significantly lowered price in exchange for shedding liabilities related to the projects. 
 
 But in April 2016, four months after the deal closed, Toshiba concluded it had miscalculated and accused CB&I of inflating Shaw’s assets by $2.2 billion, and asked to renegotiate. CB&I balked and sued Toshiba for breach of contract last July. A preliminary decision in December ruled in favor of Toshiba’s request to renegotiate. CB&I has appealed that ruling. “We remain confident this issue will come to a resolution favorable to CB&I,” said Gentry Brann, a spokeswoman for the company. CB&I has argued that at least some of the reactor problems have been because of Westinghouse and its AP1000 designs. 
 
 Westinghouse has turned to another construction contractor, Fluor Corp., to help get its projects back on track, but it’s too early to say how much progress they’re making. Meanwhile, the NRC continues to press Westinghouse about problems with its AP1000 design after a neutron shield block, which contains radiation, failed during testing. Regulators will hold a hearing this week at which Westinghouse is expected to explain its work on the issue; Toshiba meanwhile declined to comment. 
 
 Those troubled projects in the American South are now threatening the Japanese icon’s foundations. The value of Toshiba shares has been cut in half over the last six weeks, wiping out more than $7 billion in market value. 
 
 And what of the U.S. nuclear renaissance? Westinghouse’s projects for Southern in Georgia and Scana in South Carolina had once been viewed as part of a rebirth of the U.S. atomic power industry. However, stumbles with those projects, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima and a flood of cheap natural gas that lowered U.S. power prices made new reactors increasingly expensive and risky. Of the 30-odd applications for new reactors that started in the mid-2000s, only the four Westinghouse units have gone forward. 
 
 One figure who seems to have come out of the Westinghouse mess pretty much unscathed is Shaw founder Bernhard. He completed the sale of his firm to CB&I in 2013, pulling in $3.3 billion for himself and other shareholders. Bernhard, whose stake was worth about $50 million at the time of the sale, now runs a private equity firm in Baton Rouge. On his website, Bernhard touts his 25-year experience at Shaw and says his new fund “seeks to create sustainable value.” 
 
 "They got out whole and then some,” said Silver, the analyst with Morningstar. “It was a good deal for them but only because they were able to unload the hot potato.” 
 
 — With assistance by Stephen Stapczynski, and Mark Chediak 

 TOKYO (Reuters) - After a day of delays and confusion, Japan’s Toshiba Corp (6502.T) said on Tuesday it expected to book a $6.3 billion hit to its U.S. nuclear unit, a writedown that wipes out its shareholder equity and will drag the group to a full-year loss. 
 
 The logo of Toshiba Corp. are seen at the company's facility in Kawasaki, Japan February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato 
 
 Hours earlier on Tuesday, the battered conglomerate rattled investors by failing to release its earnings on schedule, saying initially it was ‘not ready’ and then announcing later it needed more time to probe its Westinghouse nuclear business after internal reports uncovered potential problems. 
 
 The figures eventually released were numbers that have yet to be approved by its auditor and Toshiba cautioned investors that a major revision was possible. Fully audited numbers are now not due till March 14 after the firm was granted a reprieve for its formal filing by Japanese regulators. 
 
 Toshiba also said in a statement it could push harder to raise capital, including selling a majority stake in its memory chip arm. Previously, it had sought to sell just under 20 percent of its prize business. 
 
 “Finally now people are starting to recognize that internal control problems, the accounting issues and governance issues are very real and no longer abstract,” said Zuhair Khan, an analyst at Jefferies in Tokyo. 
 
 “They impact the viability of the company.” 
 
 Shares in the group slid 8 percent, putting the company’s market value at 973 billion yen ($8.6 billion), less than half its value in mid-December. Just under a decade ago, the firm was worth almost 5 trillion yen. 
 
 Slideshow (3 Images) 
 
 It also announced the first top-level departure since the nuclear problems were uncovered in December: chairman Shigenori Shiga, a former Westinghouse boss brought in to the top role last year after a $1.3 billion accounting scandal in 2015 shook up Toshiba’s upper ranks. 
 
 Toshiba said it expected to book a 499.9 billion yen ($4.4 billion) net loss for the nine months to December, and a 390 billion yen net loss for the full year. 
 
 It also ended 2016 with negative shareholder equity due to the 712.5 billion yen nuclear writedown - a charge that was first flagged in December last year. 
 
 Toshiba said it would withdraw from nuclear plant construction overseas. Reuters reported this month that Toshiba was seeking at least a partial exit from ventures in Britain and India, a blow to both countries’ nuclear plans. 
 
 WESTINGHOUSE WOES 
 
 In an earlier, separate statement, Toshiba outlined concerns at its Westinghouse business, the U.S. nuclear unit bought from the UK government a decade ago. 
 
 Internal reports, Toshiba said, suggested controls at Westinghouse had been “insufficient” and it needed to look into whether senior managers at Westinghouse exerted “inappropriate pressure” during discussions over a U.S. deal to buy the company at the heart of its cost overruns, it said. 
 
 “We judged that it would take about a month for external lawyers ... to conduct these further probes and for the independent auditors to review the results,” Toshiba said. 
 
 A source briefed on the matter said Toshiba had not been able to immediately secure the approval of its auditor, PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata. The source asked not to be identified because he is not allowed to talk the media. 
 
 PricewaterhouseCoopers Aarata declined to comment, citing client confidentiality. Toshiba declined to comment on the audit process. 
 
 For a graphic on Toshiba businesses, click here
– The chairman of Japanese electronics and energy giant Toshiba resigned Tuesday after the company logged such massive losses—a projected $6.3 billion—in its nuclear business that it must sell its lucrative computer-chip business to avoid going belly-up. Well, maybe $6.3 billion. Reuters reports that a day of "delays and confusion" preceded the announcement, with the company missing its scheduled earnings release due to unpreparedness and a lack of certainty around its US nuclear unit, Westinghouse. The numbers that were ultimately released are unaudited and may change "by a wide margin," the AP reports. In the meantime, Chairman Shigenori Shiga will step down from the board but stay on as an exec. He is quitting over huge losses from the acquisition of CB&I Stone & Webster by Westinghouse. Toshiba said its net worth was in the negative, at minus $1.7 billion at the end of last year, but the company hopes to fix that by the end of March. President Satoshi Tsunakawa said the company also was looking for potential partners to acquire a stake in Westinghouse. As for what has gone so wrong since Toshiba bought Westinghouse for $5.4 billion in 2006, Bloomberg reports you have to travel to the "swamp country of Louisiana." Its deep dive looks at the starring role the Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group has played in "the complex tale of blown deadlines and budgets at four nuclear reactor projects in Georgia and South Carolina" being run by Westinghouse. Shaw was hired to handle the construction, though it didn't have a nuclear background. In the case of the South Carolina locations, things are three years behind schedule, though 25 million man-hours have gone into them. More here.