Lessons From China's Merger Review Decisions Learned In Recent Hard Drive Acquisitions

On 2 March 2012, China's Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM") conditioned its approval of Western Digital's acquisition of Hitachi's hard disk drive division (renamed "Viviti Technologies") under the PRC Anti-Monopoly Law ("AML").  This decision comes three months after MOFCOM imposed similar conditions on Seagate's acquisition of Samsung's hard drive business (see our prior alert, " China Conditionally Approves Seagate Acquisition of Samsung Hard Drive Business") MOFCOM's decisions in these hard disk drive transactions demonstrates again that MOFCOM will chart its own course, regardless of decisions taken on the same deals by other enforcement authorities such as the U.S. and EU. 

This is the thirteenth merger decision published so far by MOFCOM, which only releases decisions that prohibit concentrations (only one so far, Coca-Cola/Huiyuan) or impose remedies.