(Yicai Global) Nov. 15 -- Qingdao Hisense Electric Co. [SHA:600060], a Chinese home appliances manufacturing giant, said yesterday that it entered into an agreement with Japanese electronics titan Toshiba Corp. [TYO:6502] to purchase its television business.

Toshiba will sell a 95-percent stake in Toshiba Visual Solutions Corp. to Hisense Electric for USD113.6 million under the deal.

The transaction is set to be completed in late February next year. Hisense will obtain Toshiba Visual Solutions businesses including production, research and development, and sales functions as well as the license to use the Toshiba brand for a period of 40 years for visual solution partners operating in Europe, South East Asia and other markets.  

"After the acquisition is finished, Hisense Electric will integrate joint research and development, supply chains and global channel resources, thus rapidly improving market size and speeding up the internationalization process," said Liu Hongxin, chief executive of Hisense Group and chairman of Hisense Electric. 

Hisense pushed forward its international expansion by acquiring rights from Sharp Corp. to produce TVs under its name in North America in 2015 and by sponsoring top world sporting events such as the 2016 European Cup and 2018 World Cup.

Toshiba TV's sales volume ranked among the top three in the Japanese market last year, market research institute IHS Markit's data show. Hisense TV's market share ranked first in the Chinese market for 13 consecutive years, and was the third largest globally in 2015 and last year, China Market Monitor Co. data show.