FUJITSU TO SELL HARD-DISK DRIVE BUSINESS: REPORT

Tokyo
The Economic Times

Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. said on Thursday it was reviewing its loss-making hard-disk drive business, following a report they are likely to be sold to a US firm in a multi-million-dollar deal.

"We are exploring various possibilities for our HDD business," a Fujitsu spokesman said, adding that nothing concrete had been decided.

The Nikkei economic daily said the company was considering selling the manufacturing operations to Western Digital Corp. of the United States, the world's second-largest maker of hard-disk drives.

The Japanese firm aims to reach an accord by the end of the year, the newspaper said without naming sources.

The sale price is estimated at 70-100 bn yen (660-950 mn dollars), it said. The annual revenue of the business is about 330 bn yen.

Fujitsu has been trying to focus on core growth areas. Last year it announced it would end production of plasma televisions, a technology the company was the first in the world to sell, as competition had grown fierce.

The company intends to sell all of its hard-drive operations together, including a domestic plant and overseas factories in Thailand and the Philippines, the Nikkei said.

It will ask Western Digital to continue to employ its roughly 15,000 workers, the paper said.