Seagate completes purchase of Samsung's HDD business

LONDON – Seagate Technology plc has completed the acquisition of the hard disk drive business of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Seagate (Cupertino, Calif.) is paying approximately $1.4 billion consisting of 45,239,490 ordinary shares in Seagate and the balance settled in cash. The shares currently stand at about $15.60 in value making the shares worth about half the deal value. In return for its holding Samsung will designate a nominee to join Seagate's board of directors.

This transaction was announced in April 2011 along with a series of other agreements between Seagate and Samsung. Seagate is supplying disk drives to Samsung for PCs, notebooks and consumer electronics devices. Samsung is supplying its semiconductor products for use in Seagate's enterprise solid state drives (SSDs), solid-state hybrid drives and other products. The companies have also extended and enhanced their existing patent cross-license agreement and have expanded cooperation to co-develop enterprise storage solutions.

The deal is expected to give Seagate about 40 percent of the market for HDDs, but still in second place behind the combined sales of Western Digital and Hitachi GST, expected to have 50 percent market share.


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