Seagate has quite successfully slipped over U.S. antimonopoly authorities for its acquisition of Samsung business, associated with the release of hard disk drives. The second deal, linking the interests of Western Digital and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies was some how harder to pass. American anti monopoly authorities forced to allocate the assets of WD in third market player - Toshiba, and this week the participants in the transaction reported on some shifts in this direction.
So, today the two companies announced an agreement that must pass a final agreement in March this year. Under the deal, WD will give Toshiba a part of production capacity hard drive size 3.5 consumer and server class. In addition, Toshiba will pass the relevant intellectual property. Toshiba intends to consolidate production at its two factories in Philippines and contract manufacturer in China.
Toshiba, in turn, will give WD shares subdivision Toshiba Storage Device Thailand, which is located in Thailand, and after the October floods are still unable to resume work on the production of hard drive size 2.5 . Thus, Toshiba gets rid of toxic assets and get access to the the market size of hard drives 3.5 , and WD receives the additional production capacity in Thailand. In addition, the last of the company through a deal with Toshiba is able to complete the acquisition of Hitachi, since the improvement of competitive situation on the market of 3.5-inch drives were a key condition put forward by U.S. authorities.