Toshiba’s announcement comes a day after company president Hisao Tanaka and several other senior figures resigned over a $1.2 billion accounting scandal blamed on their overzealous pursuit of profit.

Chairman Masashi Muromachi will take over as president in the interim, the company said.

In a statement, the firm said the sale would help “efficient use of the company group assets” and “improve its balance sheets”.

An independent committee found Monday that from a period of 2008 to 2014, the company had reported fraudulent earnings of 151.8 billion yen ($1.2 billion) higher than its actual estimate.

Koichi Ueda, an attorney and head of the panel, said he was surprised by what they had found.

“It’s not my understanding that I gave orders for improper accounting, but the reality is that such an observation has been made”, Tanaka said.

The Japanese conglomerate has been under investigation for its “accounting irregularities” for three months now.

Aso declined to comment when asked if Toshiba would face any kind of financial penalty.

Some analysts have voiced concerns that there could be more issues ahead, including a possible writedown on Toshiba’s Westinghouse nuclear business which wasn’t a major target of the latest probe. Shares in the firm fell 1.7 per cent today, and have dropped around 20 per cent since early April when the accounting issues came to light.

The Finnish company said the sale of the shares and the resignation had “no other effect on the strategic alliance” between the two companies. The Toshiba panel, headed by a former Tokyo prosecutor, painted the picture of a corporate culture where underlings couldn’t challenge powerful bosses who were intent on boosting profits at nearly any cost.