Singapore seeks feedback on US$19b acquisition of SanDisk by Western Digital

SINGAPORE'S anti-trust body said on Friday it is seeking feedback over the US$19 billion acquisition of SanDisk Corp by US giant Western Digital Corp.

The Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) said the proposed acquisition, according to both parties, "will not result in a substantial lessening of competition for enterprise SSDs (solid-state drives) in Singapore or worldwide".

CCS was told that the two companies overlap globally in the supply of only enterprise SSDs, a more premium form of storage device compared to spinning hard-disk drives (HDDs).

SanDisk is one of the largest makers of Nand flash memory chips, which store data in mobile devices. The technology is useful in cloud-computing data centres, given the smaller power consumption and quick processing speed.

In early 2014, Western Digital moved its production for its unit HGST Singapore from here to Thailand. It fired more than 500 workers based in Singapore then, alongside the move.