Toshiba is to sell its television business in its latest effort to raise emergency funds, parting ways with a division that once symbolised the dominance of Japanese technology and thrust the brand into millions of living rooms around the world.

In a signal of how far the value of Toshiba’s TV unit has fallen — and of how aggressively Toshiba is now shedding parts of the company — the conglomerate sold 95 per cent of its TV and visual products subsidiary for just Y12.9bn ($114m) to Hisense, the Qingdao-based electronics group. In the past, a big technology sale to China might have triggered outrage in Japan but one Tokyo-based analyst said on Tuesday that the move was “unlikely to raise many eyebrows”.

The sale comes as people close to Toshiba have described “ongoing problems” behind the scenes of the company’s efforts to secure its finances after huge losses emerged last year at its US nuclear subsidiary.