Freecom Acquired by Verbatim (MKM)

Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd. (MKM), a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (MCC) announced the acquisition of Freecom B.V., a privately-held data storage and multimedia solutions provider established in Germany with headquarters in Rijswijk, Netherlands and offices in Austria, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and United Kingdom.

Effective September 1, 2009, the stock-funded acquisition includes all of Freecom’s physical assets, patents, trademarks, technology, engineering, sales and marketing expertise. The purchase price was not disclosed. With the acquisition, MKM adds Freecom to the MKM/Verbatim group. Verbatim is already a leading brand in the worldwide external storage market.

The Freecom acquisition represents yet another investment made by the MKM/Verbatim group aimed at the growing external hard disk drive (HDD) market. The asset acquisition of SmartDisk, made in June 2007, has proved successful in establishing MKM/Verbatim in both the portable and desktop external HDD markets on a global basis. By leveraging the strength of the Verbatim brand and channel relationships in the worldwide removable storage markets, the MKM/Verbatim external HDD business has grown more than 600 percent during the past two years.

Freecom is an industry pioneer in easy-to-use external storage and one of the leading European storage brands, holding many key distribution and retail partnerships throughout Europe and currently expanding in Asia. The company has a twenty-year history in developing and marketing high-quality, innovative storage solutions that meet the needs of consumers, professional users and small businesses. Freecom’s capabilities and premium market position will be a very powerful addition to the already expanding MKM/Verbatim external storage business.

MKM expects both Verbatim and Freecom businesses will be strengthened by improvement in economies of scale related to procurement, manufacturing and logistics. Both businesses will also benefit from collaborative product development and marketing efforts that will uniquely position both brands while reducing time to market for new and innovative storage solutions. Collectively, Verbatim and Freecom will capitalize on geographic and channel synergies which will enable a higher degree of market penetration resulting from a diverse range of storage solutions and unique brand positioning.

“The acquisition of Freecom brings together two of the industry’s strongest removable storage brands,” said Shigenori Otsuka, president of MKM. “It accelerates MKM’s strategic initiative to fuel growth in the external storage category, strengthens our combined global market leadership positions and generates opportunities for growth in new markets. We’re especially pleased in the complementary positioning of the Verbatim and Freecom brands and the collaborative spirit that we see having brought this new company into the MKM/Verbatim group.”

“As part of the MKM/Verbatim group, Freecom will benefit from the economies of scale that can be achieved as well as the geographic and channel synergies of the Verbatim and Freecom brands,” said Dick C. Hoogerdijk, Freecom B.V. President, CEO and co-founder. “We also look forward to the opportunity to leverage the strengths of the Freecom organization to contribute to the total business of the MKM/Verbatim/Freecom group, both now and in the years to come.”

The need for a variety of fast, easy solutions for storing, sharing and transporting data files, presentations, photos, music and video is fueling explosive growth in the worldwide storage industry. According to research analysts at IDC, data storage will grow at more than 50 percent per year between 2008 to 2010. With the addition of Freecom, the MKM/Verbatim group is well positioned to serve this expanding market with industry leading brands, strong distribution channels, innovative storage solutions, and an operations platform that allows quick scaling to meet specific consumer and market needs.