Two of the leading NAND storage component makers, Western Digital and Kioxia are expected to officially announce their merger sometime this month.
The plan for the merger of these two companies is not new, it has been highlighted before, in fact, the discussion about it happened because these two companies have a joint manufacturing plant in Japan.
Some reports say that Western Digital is expected to hold 51 percent of the company's shares, with the rest going to Kioxia and the company's shareholders, including Toshiba and SK Hynix.
Looking at the current shareholding, Kioxia technically has the larger stake, but the agreement from the two companies shows that Western Digital will buy Kioxia's stake until a 51-49 balance is reached.
This combination is also seen to benefit these two companies in terms of global NAND manufacturing market share. When the merger is finalized, Western Digital and Kioxia will hold 34.3 percent of global NAND production, surpassing Samsung which currently holds 31.1 percent of the NAND production market.
In the meantime, a combination of several Japanese banks, including MUFG Bank and the Development Bank of Japan is expected to provide a loan of $12.7 billion to enable this merger to take place without problems.