Western Digital/Hitachi Received Conditional Nod from MOFCOM

On March 2nd, 2012, the acquisition by Western Digital ("WD") of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies ("Hitachi") finally received conditional nod from the Ministry of Commerce ("MOFCOM"), three month after MOFCOM conditionally cleared the Seagate/Samsung deal¹ .

Review Timeline

According to MOFCOM's announcement ², this review process is particularly lengthy: the first submission was made on April 2nd, 2011, while the clearance was obtained 11months later. During this period, this filing was withdrawn by WD shortly before the expiry of the Extended Phase II due to "significant changes of facts". On November 7th, 2011, WD re-submitted the notification and the filing was cleared at the end of the second round of Phase II.