The mega deal comes on back of negotiations going on for 9 monhts. For a cool $19 billion, Western Digital now gets to call SanDisk their wholly owned subsidiary. Although SanDisk might be best known for flash memory cards and USB sticks, the company has lately entered into diverse products like enterprise notebook hard drives and also builds OEM memory components for Apple and Nvidia. Western Digital also stands to own around 5800 patents that SanDisk held worldwide. The flash memory maker’s patent portfolio is consistently recognized as one of the strongest in the technology industry. In a statement, SanDisk CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said his company, “look[s] forward to contributing to the success of Western Digital as it transforms into the leading storage solutions company.” The deal will officially buttoned up for good on Thursday, May 12th. The shareholders in SanDisk however did not take the news sportingly as the stock is trading negatively since the markets opened today.
