Hitachi's HDD division "HGST" will be sold, under Western Digital affiliate

Hitachi's HDD division "HGST (Hitachi Global Storage Technologies)" known for having sold talks in the past has been officially announced that it will eventually be sold.

We have sold to Western Digital with the largest share in the world.

Details are as below.
(PDF file)About transfer of hard disk drive business from Hitachi to Western digital

Monday, March 07, 2011

According to Hitachi and Western Digital press releases, Hitachi and Western Digital agreed to sell Hitachi's HDD division "HGST".

In the sale of HGST, Hitachi will pay cash of 3.5 billion dollars (about 288.1 billion yen) and 25 million shares (equivalent to 750 million dollars, about 61.7 billion yen) of its own stock from Western Digital.

In this acquisition, Hitachi will hold approximately 10% of Western Digital's outstanding shares, and the share transfer is expected to be completed by the end of September 2011. We have also decided to take 2 people from Hitachi to take over as the director of Western Digital.

Western Digital CEO John Coyne said that this acquisition will benefit from strengthening further R & D capabilities, enriching product lineup, cost structure and strengthening market competitiveness.

By the way, HGST was established in 2003 by Hitachi acquiring HDD division from IBM for $ 2.05 billion,Research on technology to raise recording capacity in collaboration with HitachiAlthough it was also done, it was integrated with Western Digital this time, the main HDD manufacturers will be Western Digital, Seagate, Samsung which bought Maxtor in 2005, Toshiba which acquired Fujitsu HDD division in 2009 It seems to be 4 companies.