Seagate going private…again?

By Geoff Duncan October 15, 2010

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Storage and disk drive manufacturer Seagate has revealed that it’s in discussions with an unnamed party about taking the company private, which would mean de-listing the company from the stock market and converting to a privately-held entity. Seagate hasn’t named its suitor, but says it has hired Morgan Stanley and Perella Weinberg Partners to provide financial advice, as well as retained legal counsel. Seagate says there is no assurance at this time that they’ll receive a formal offer to take the company private.

Such a move would actually mark the second time Seagate has backed away from being a publicly traded company. Seagate was founded back in 1979, but in 2000 a group of investors led by Silver Lake Capital and the Texas Pacific Group took the company private in a transaction worth about $1.7 billion. However, when the dot-com bubble burst, Seagate went public again to raise funds, relaunching as a public company in 2002 with an IPO that brought in around $870 million, making it one of the largest IPOs of the time.

Seagate’s current CEO, Steve Luczo, was one of the founders of the Silver Lake Capital fund. Luczo was named Seagate’s CEO in 1998, although he gave up the CEO chair (retaining a his role as board chairman) in 2004. In early 2009, Seagate’s board appointed Luczo president and CEO.

Although Seagate was founded in Ireland, the bulk of its more than 50,000 employees worth in Asia. The company is headquartered in California.

Editors' Recommendations

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Computing

Get ready — SSD prices are about to skyrocket

An SSD installed in a PC motherboard.

It's been coming for a while, but it looks like SSD prices have finally reached an inflection point. Pricing on consumer SSDs are going to "skyrocket" over the next few months, according to an industry source cited by Tom's Hardware.

According to the source, price increases are being brought on by a shortage of NAND chips, which are critical for SSDs. That's not exactly news. In November, TrendForce reported that Samsung planned to cut production of NAND flash to stabilize SSD prices. According to the report, major memory players like Samsung and Western Digital have seen a decline in profits over the last year.

Computing

The 11 best external hard drives for 2024

Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim 2TB HD box.

Almost nothing is worse than realizing you don’t have enough space on your PC to store your latest files. External drives can be a great solution to that problem, as well as a good backup source to keep your most precious data protected. As outlined in our article on how to choose an external hard drive, you’ll want one that’s fast, easy to use, and won’t break the bank. Our current top pick is the Samsung T7, a compact, affordable, high-speed storage solution, but there are plenty of other options to choose from, as outlined our definitive list of the best external hard drives you can buy today below.

Computing

How to send large files for free

Google Drive in Chrome on a MacBook.

Being able to share files with others is one of the many benefits of modern technology. But when those files are too large to share and transfer, things can get a lot more complicated.

We’re here to tell you that there are easy ways to send and upload your large files for free. In this post, we’ve compiled a list of free cloud storage services and provided tips on how to speed up the file transfer process.