One of the bidders is Western Digital (WD). Its SanDisk division has a joint venture with Toshiba in the NAND Flash factories which Toshiba wants to sell. Western Digital has sought to purchase more of the Toshiba NAND flash facility since Toshiba originally offered a minority stake in their share in early 2017. Western Digital has claimed that the JV agreement requires Toshiba to include WD in any sale decision. Toshiba has rejected this claim and tried to move its share of the JV assets out of the WD/Toshiba JV. WD has said that they would take Toshiba to International Arbitration Court if they were not given preferential treatment in the unit sale.