Kioxia and Western Digital Close to Merge

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Japan chipmaker Kioxia, Western Digital close to merger: sources
Japanese chipmaker Kioxia Holdings Corp. and its U.S. peer Western Digital Corp. are expected to agree on a merger as early as this month, sources familiar with the matter said last Friday, a deal that would create the world’s leading producer of memory chips for PCs and smartphones.

The 2 companies plan to set up a holding company to integrate their operations of producing NAND flash memory chips, widely used in electronic devices. They aim to list the new company on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the United States, according to the sources.

Kioxia shareholders include Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp., which owns about 40% of the chipmaker.

The combined market share of Kioxia and Western Digital for NAND memories stood at 35.4% as of March, larger than the top maker, South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co., which accounted for 34.3%.