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"Sony has continued to rebuild and reorganise itself after it\u00A0announced\u00A0an agreement to sell its chemical products businesses -- which include\u00A0Sony Chemical &amp;amp;amp; Information Device Corporation (SCID) -- to the\u00A0Development Bank of Japan for an expected price of\u00A058.0 billion yen, circa\u00A0$730 million.\r\n\r\nMany people may not even be aware that the Japanese electronics giant has chemical businesses (yes, more than one) but that will no longer be the case come the fall, when both sides anticipate that the deal will go through.\r\n\r\nIn between now and then, Sony will get its house in order. The firm will transfer SCID business units that develop non-chemical products, which include\u00A0optical resin and magnetic device, to the main company and, likewise, all chemical related business lines within Sony will be transferred over to SCID.\r\n\r\nThe move is latest in a line of organisational changes that new president Kazuo Hirai is overseeing at the stalling company, which recorded\u00A0a whopping\u00A0$6.4 billion net loss\u00A0(PDF) for the full year ended March 31, 2012.\r\n\r\nThe biggest move saw Sony divorce itself out of Sony Ericsson, the mobile firm it ran with Swedish telecom company Ericsson, and, as a result,\u00A0Sony Mobile Communications was born in February.\r\n\r\nThe company has also made plans to lay-off 10,000 staff and invest $926 million in restructuring.\r\n\r\nSony\u00A0ended its LCD joint venture with Sharp\u00A0last month, but not without recouping its full\u00A0$125.79 million investment in the initiative. It moved on quickly and this week inked an agreement to work with Panasonic to develop new OLED panels, which will go into mass production next year.\r\n\r\nThe company says that is is &amp;quot;currently evaluating the impact&amp;quot; that the SCID transaction will have on its next set of annual financial results, which are not due until March next year.\r\n\r\nHirai and others will hope that next year's financials are much improved, as the disasterous results of 2012 have\u00A0cost the executives their bonuses,\u00A0Bloomberg reports.\r\n\r\nImage via Flickr / Jamiemc"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/06/28/sony-continues-to-restructure-agrees-730m-sale-of-chemical-products-businesses/>