Western Digital gets final regulatory approval for $19 billion SanDisk acquisition

[Jos]

Western Digital’s move to acquire SanDisk received its final regulatory approval today, paving the way for the storage manufacturer to become even larger this Thursday when the transaction is expected to be completed. The deal is worth approximately $19 billion, and was originally announced in October of 2015.

Western Digital is one of the largest hard drive manufacturers, along with Seagate. The buyout of SanDisk gives the company a strong foothold in the growing NAND storage market at a time demand for hard disk storage is slowing down.

SanDisk is currently the third-largest producer of NAND flash in the world, behind Toshiba and industry leader Samsung. It’s best known its for flash memory cards, USB sticks and consumer SSD drives, but the company also does enterprise notebook hard drives and has OEM memory components deals with Apple and Nvidia.

“We are pleased that the final regulatory approval has been received and we can now proceed with the planned combination with Western Digital,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, president and chief executive officer, SanDisk. “We thank our stakeholders for their support of this transaction and look forward to contributing to the success of Western Digital as it transforms into the leading storage solutions company.”

Today's final regulatory announcement comes from China's Ministry of Commerce. The transaction previously had received regulatory approvals in the U.S., E.U., Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa and Turkey.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/64769-western-digital-gets-final-regulatory-approval-19-billion.html

 

[Uncle Al]

Both are solid companies with good products and a good reputation so this could be a match made in digital heaven ..... more or less ....

 

[cliffordcooley]

Smart move that's for sure. There shouldn't be any doubt they will make good on the purchase.

 

[Unearthed]

I'm not always the biggest fan of mergers and acquisitions but this one seems to be a good one. I'm sure the consumer will benefit.

 

[Adhmuz]

It was only a matter of time before Western Digital bought their way into the SSD market, they had to if they wanted to stay relevant in years to come. They make great HDDs, and now with SanDisk's portfolio of products they can continue to be a leader in the industry, with any luck this will bring down the price of those ridiculous Black² drives that cost a fortune, they are a great idea, but at the price they're offered how can any one justify them as a sensible purchase.

 

[mbrowne5061]

I'm actually not terribly in favor of this. While Toshiba and Samsung might control larger pieces of the NAND market, SanDisk has been the gold standard for DSLR storage. I'm afraid what happened to Hitachi's legendary HDDs - get rebranded, priced into the enterprise bracket, and patents integrated into over-priced consumer products - is going to happen to SanDisk's flash cards.