The hard drive industry has been shrinking rapidly. There have been acquisitions and mergers left, right and middle. One of the main reasons is that the a lot of storage is now going into the clouds, offered by alternate tech giants and the traditional hard drive big-wigs are having a hard trying to catch up. The latest in the list of acquisitions is Seagate’s intents of buying the hard drive vendor LaCie at $186 million.
Unlike many other buy-outs, this is not going to be a simple acquisition. Rather, Seagate will have to buy 64.5 percent shares of the company from LaCie’s CEO Phillipe Spruch. After this, it will be for Seagate to try and buy out as much of the other stock as possible over the course of the next six months.
If the company is able to bag a total of 95 percent stock within the next six months, this is going to seal the deal. The final price that is to be paid to Spruch as a result of this will be increased by 3 percent while Spruch will come over to Seagate and act as the head of consumer products.
Seagate has also recently acquired the hard drive unit of Samsung for a whopping $1.4 billion. The company seems to be trying hard to improvise to the changes circumstances in the tech world and the buying of LaCie may bring it that edge since LaCie is known for producing hard drives with unique design.
For now, the deal has to be approved by both US and European authorities. But Seagate is confident that it will be able to close the deal by the third quarter of this year.
Source: Marketwatch
Courtesy: The Verge
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After this, it will be for Seagate to try and buy out as much of the
other stock as possible over the course of the next six months.