In what would be the biggest takeover in the world of hard disk drive manufacturers since 2006 when Seagate took over Maxtor, Western Digital has announced a mammoth deal that would involve it paying a cool $3.5 billion in cash and $750 million in WD common stocks.
Both WD and Hitachi have been competing against each other with high capacity hard drives in the not too distant past. In fact, Western Digital beat all its competitors’ way back in 2009 when it introduced a 1TB 2.5 inch hard drive. As a part of the deal the new company formed will retain the Western Digital name and remain headquartered in Irvine, California. John Coyne, the current CEO of WD will retain his position while Steve Milligan, president and chief executive officer of Hitachi GST, will join WD at closing as president, reporting to John Coyne.
It would be difficult to say how this new mammoth takeover would affect prices of HDD’s and the general consumer but from a tech industry analyst point of view, this sure is interesting!
