After several months of negotiations, Western Digital and Kioxia will enter into a merger agreement in August. The deal will be formalized as a spin-off of Western Digital’s flash memory business and merger with Kioxia into a separate company, with the US side owning more than 50% of the combined company. Write about it Bloomberg citing their own sources.
Image source: kioxia.com
The new company will be led by top executives from Kioxia with participation from Western Digital. Both chipmakers will be represented on the board of the combined company, which will be registered in Japan. The company’s shares will initially be traded on the Nasdaq, but their ultimate home will be Tokyo.
The final agreement has not yet been reached and the timing of the merger could change – there is even a possibility that the negotiations will end inconclusively, the sources say. Western Digital officials declined to comment on the proposed merger, while Kioxia and Toshiba did not respond to journalists’ inquiries. The two companies, which have a joint flash memory business, have worked closely together for years and a merger would increase their competition with Samsung Electronics. They last discussed a merger in 2021.
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