Goldman Sachs has snubbed a second, and increased, offer by Panasonic for the stake that the American bank holds in Sanyo, the struggling Japanese electronics group that it rescued two years ago.

Panasonic, whose senior executives had indicated a yearning to buy Sanyo, approached Goldman Sachs yesterday with an offer of 130 yen a share. Panasonic is hoping to use Sanyo, whose head office is in the same street in Osaka, to fill two major gaps in its portfolio: lithium batteries and solar panels. These two areas are expected to drive growth in consumer electronics and energy supply investment once the world begins to crawl out of recession.

However, the downturn has already bludgeoned the industry far harder than previously expected. After similarly draconian downgrades by its peers, Panasonic last week hit the market with an enormous 90 per cent cut in its profit forecasts.

Goldman, along with two Japanese banks, Daiwa Securities SMBC and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, holds preferred shares that would, when converted give the trio a combined 70 per cent stake in Sanyo.

Panasonic’s previous offer of Y120 a share was thrown out by Goldman last week on the basis that neither the price nor the process of Panasonic’s bid for Sanyo was fair on shareholders. That offer was substantially below the current market price of Sanyo shares, although well above the Y70 at which Goldman and the two other major investors bought their preferred shares.

The cash-strapped American bank has not publicly commented on what it believes would be “fair” value for the shares, though some have speculated that it may attempt to hold out for a price above Y200. Most investors took the initial rejection of the offer as a piece of pure negotiating strategy, and continue to price Sanyo shares on the footing that a deal will eventually be cobbled together.

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