Toshiba And Fujitsu Finalise Hard Drive Deal
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Toshiba and Fujitsu have today announced that they have concluded a definitive agreement on the transfer of the Fujitsu hard disk drive (HDD) business to Toshiba.

The two companies said that Fujitsu’s HDD business will now be transferred to a new company called Toshiba Storage Device Corporation.

After the transfer, Toshiba will handle the sales and marketing of all HDD products, including Fujitsu’s, and entrust all aspects of design, R&D, quality assurance, production technology, and technology support to TSDC.

Fujitsu’s sales and marketing offices outside of Japan, with the exception of some offices in certain regions, will be transferred to Toshiba’s overseas business operations.

Toshiba will acquire a stake of 80.1 percent in Toshiba Storage Device Corporation by the target date of July 1st, 2009 and make it a Toshiba Group subsidiary. Fujitsu will continue to hold a stake of 19.9 percent until the end of December 2010. After that, Fujitsu will transfer its stake to Toshiba, at which point TSDC will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Toshiba.

The value of the transfer is expected to be approximately 30 billion yen. Toshiba’s 80.1 percent ownership of TSDC is expected to be valued at approximately 24 billion yen (at the time of the July close), and the remaining 19.9 percent ownership holding at approximately 6 billion yen (to be held until the end of December 2010). However, these amounts are subject to change upon completion of the transfer.

 

Upon transfer of the HDD business on July 1st, TSDC will assume net debt of approximately 6 billion yen. This figure has been excluded from the indicated 30 billion yen value of the transfer.

Toshiba aims to reinforce its position as a leading vendor of small form factor HDDs by entering into the enterprise HDD business for server and data storage system applications, where Fujitsu is currently a leader.

This move will also allow Toshiba to further enlarge its leading solid state drive (SSD) business by developing SSD products for servers and enterprise storage systems, thus maximizing the synergy with Fujitsu’s enterprise HDD technology.

Toshiba aims to strengthen its overall competitiveness and market standing by offering total storage solutions and services that meet a broad range of customer needs.