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“Firewall” to Ensure Independence of Acquiree - MOFCOM’s Conditional Approval of Seagate’s Acquisition of Samsung’s HDD Business
“Firewall” to Ensure Independence of Acquiree - MOFCOM’s Conditional Approval of Seagate’s Acquisition of Samsung’s HDD Business
The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (“MOFCOM") issued the Announcement of the Anti-monopoly Examination Decision on the Conditional Approval for the Acquisition of the Hard Disk Drive Business of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. by Seagate Technology PLC (the “Announcement") on 12 December 2011, its tenth conditional clearance decision since the introduction of the Anti-monopoly Law of the People’s Republic of China (the “AML").
According to the Announcement, Seagate Technology PLC (“Seagate") submitted the notification for the acquisition of the hard disk drive (“HDD") business of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (“Samsung") by Seagate (the “Transaction") to MOFCOM on 19 May 2011. MOFCOM formally accepted the case on 13 June, and decided to further review the Transaction on 13 July. MOFCOM extended the review on 11 October and finally made a conditional clearance decision on 12 December. It took 6 months for MOFCOM, from the date of accepting the case, to fulfill the examination on the Transaction. It has exhausted all three phases stipulated in the AML.