Seagate – Samsung Transaction

Seagate’s acquisition of Samsung’s Hard Disk Drive (HDD) business closed in December 2011 after announcements by several regulatory authorities that their investigations closed without any determination that the transaction would harm competition. The European Commission announcement occurred in October, and the U.S. FTC voted unanimously to close their investigation in December. This transaction also required review by Chinese competition authority (the Anti-Monopoly Bureau of the Ministry of Finance and Commerce, or MOFCOM), which rendered its decision in December. Seagate retained Compass Lexecon experts Daniel Rubinfeld in the U.S. and Jorge Padilla in Europe to conduct analyses of competition in the HDD industry and to provide findings to various regulators. Glenn Mitchell, in the Los Angeles office, managed the analysis, with the assistance of Duncan Cameron. Lorenzo Coppi managed the team in the London office. The Compass Lexecon team analyzed bidding and competition, pricing, and innovation among HDD manufacturers and developed a number of empirical results showing that the proposed transaction would not lessen competition, increase prices or decrease innovation. Compass Lexecon experts made presentations to regulatory authorities in the U.S., China and Europe. We worked with both U.S. and Europe based counsel, headed up by Scott Sher at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Washington, DC and Philip Mansfield at Allen & Overy LLP in London and Brussels.