Western Digital to buy SanDisk for $19bn

Western Digital Corp. has acquired rival SanDisk Corp. for a whopping $19 billion. The deal sees SanDisk valued at $86.50 per share, a 15% premium over the previous day’s stock market closing price.

In a press release, Western Digital claimed the merger “will double its addressable market and expand its participation in higher-growth segments”. Toshiba also has $US 18.4 billion in fresh debt. Sources suggested there were three names in hat: Western Digital, Micron, and China’s Tsinghua Unigroup, which is itself already a stakeholder in Western Digital.

SanDisk was thought to be shopping for a buyer, and industry watchers had said Western Digital would be a logical candidate. In many ways, SanDisk, with its deep investment in flash memory chips represents a future without the spinning disk hard drives of Western Digital. ‘The combined company will be ideally positioned to capture the growth opportunities created by the rapidly evolving storage industry. WD expects the transaction to be complete by Q3 of 2016.