History
The company was founded in 2003 as a merger of the hard disk drive businesses of IBM and Hitachi. Hitachi paid IBM US$2.05 billion for its HDD business.
On March 8, 2012, Western Digital ("WD") acquired Hitachi Global Storage Technologies for $3.9 billion in cash and 25 million shares of WD common stock valued at approximately $0.9 billion. The deal resulted in Hitachi, Ltd. owning approximately 10 percent of WD shares outstanding, and it has the right to designate two individuals to the board of directors of WD. It was agreed that WD would operate with WD Technologies and HGST as wholly owned subsidiaries and they would compete in the marketplace with separate brands and product lines.
To address the requirements of regulatory agencies, in May 2012 WD divested to Toshiba assets that enabled Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets.
Read more about this topic: Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
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