News

Maxtor Completes Merger with Quantum HDD

• By Scott Bekker
• 04/02/2001

Revenues in 2000 for the business units that make up the combined storage company amounted to $6 billion.

According to Maxtor, the merger establishes the company as the world's largest hard drive manufacturer based on annual combined unit shipments.

The two companies account for 36 percent of the hard drive market, from desktop PCs to servers.

Quantum Corp., which makes the DLT and SuperDLT tape drives as well as tape libraries and other storage products, continues as an independent company. Michael Brown, Quantum's chairman and CEO, joins Maxtor's board of directors.

The new company has 10,500 employees. The merger, which company officials say will bring cost savings of $200 million within two years, resulted in 530 jobs being eliminated.

Maxtor intends to unify the Maxtor and Quantum hard drive product lines in two stages over the next two years, although there will be no changes to the Quantum hard drives for at least six months.

Quantum HDD shareholders will receive 1.52 shares of Maxtor stock for each share of Quantum HDD that they own. The new company's stock will trade as MXTR on the Nasdaq stock exchange. -