South Korean electroincs giant Samsung has announced it is abandoning its efforts to take over SanDisk, a leading maker of flash memory and portable media players. Although the companies have been dancing around each other for almost six months, SanDisk rejected a $5.8 billion takeover offer from Samsung, and that apparently soured the relationship.
Samsung vice chairman and CEO Yoon Woo Lee didn’t mince words calling off the deal: “Your surprise announcements of a quarter billion dollar operating loss, a hurried renegotiation of your relationship with Toshiba and major job losses across your organization all point to a considerable increase in your risk profile and a material deterioration in value, both on a stand-alone basis as well as to Samsung.”
