Industrial News

Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC) today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Viviti Technologies Ltd. (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies), effective Mar. 8, 2012, for $3.9 billion in cash and 25 million shares of WDC common stock valued at approximately $0.9 billion1. Hitachi, Ltd. now owns approximately 10 percent of WDC shares outstanding, and it has the right to designate two individuals to the board of directors of WD. The new WD will operate with WD Technologies (WD) and HGST as wholly owned subsidiaries. Aggregated revenues of the two companies in 2011 were $15 billion. As [...]

French oil and gas group Total has announced it will launch a friendly tender offer for a majority share in California-based solar company, SunPower. The two parties have also entered into a research and collaboration agreement. The deal is set to be one of the largest ever single investments by an oil company in renewable energy, as Total plans to buy up to 60 percent of SunPower’s A and B shares at a price of $23.25 each; a 46 percent premium to the A shares’ closing price on Wednesday, and an overall cost of $1.37 billion for the [...]

Strategic transaction greatly expands ON Semiconductor’s presence in Japan and is expected to further the company’s growth on a global basis ON Semiconductor Corporation (Nasdaq: ONNN) today announced the completion of the acquisition of SANYO Semiconductor Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SANYO Electric, and other assets related to SANYO Electric’s semiconductor business, by ON Semiconductor. Under the terms of the purchase agreement, ON Semiconductor paid approximately ¥11.8 billion ($144 million) in cash to SANYO Electric and drew down approximately ¥31.7 billion ($378 million) under a loan agreement with SANYO Electric. “The combination with SANYO Semiconductor represents an important step [...]

PerkinElmer Inc. (NYSE:PKI) completed the offloading of its illumination and detection solutions business to a private equity firm for a half billion. The unit went to Excelitas Technologies Corp., an affiliate of New York-based private equity firm Veritas Capital Fund III LP, and netted the Waltham, Mass.-based diagnostics and equipment giant $482 million, according to the company. The 3,000-employee division, with 14 plants around the world, makes custom lighting and sensors for the OEM market in the health, environmental and security industries. PerkinElmer said it expects the business to generate about $300 million in revenues this year. When the [...]