The negotiations between Sandisk, the world's largest memory card manufacturer, and Samsung have reportedly turned sour after Sandisk rejected the Korean company's latest takeover offer.
Despite offering over £2.5bn for the company, Sandisk said the latest figure "is an opportunistic attempt to take advantage of SanDisk's current stock price." Last night, the stock hit $15.04 a share, before recovering 52 per cent to $22.82 in after hours trading, once news of the deal surfaced.
According to the memory card firm, Samsung hinted that "it might be willing to pay a significant premium" on the $28.75 share price on May 22, 2008, which was the time negotiations reportedly began.
Full and fair
However, the recent offer of $26 per share is "full and fair" according to a Samsung spokesperson, and recent Korean filings have shown the deal is still on.
These two companies are among the biggest in the fast emerging flash memory market. Samsung developed the first 2GB NAND memory chip and SanDisk is one of the biggest memory card manufacturers.
In recent years, the capacity for flash memory has shot up to a reported 256GB, making it more than adequate for laptops, and most, if not all, high end mobile phones have a memory card slot for expansion.
If Samsung can corner all aspects of the flash market then it will have another profit machine on its hands.
