Brussels, 28/04/2006 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has cleared the proposed merger of Maxtor by Seagate. Following a preliminary examination, the Commission concluded that Seagate's and Maxtor's activities overlap in the European Economic Area and at a world level in particular in the production of hard disks (HDDs) for enterprise applications and HDDs for desktops.
The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed merger between two US manufacturers of hard-disk drives (HDD), Seagate and Maxtor. The Commission concluded that the transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (EEA) or any significant part of it. HDD customers are large and sophisticated buyers, such as HP and Dell. They do and will continue to benefit from strong purchaser power. On the supply side, there are eight other HDD manufacturers who compete against Seagate and Maxtor in the overall HDD business, of which three in the enterprise HDD market. Manufacturers who are active in the production of HDDs for other applications face relatively low barriers to entry into the neighbouring HDD markets.