SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc said on Wednesday it has received merger clearances from the Chinese antitrust authority for its acquisition of Intel Corp’s NAND memory chip business, clearing the way for the world’s second-largest memory chip maker to completion of securing regulatory approvals from all eight countries.
The U.S. chip giant last October agreed to sell its NAND memory chip business to SK Hynix for $9 billion, part of a move to divest to focus on its smaller but more lucrative Optane memory business which uses more advanced technology.
“SK Hynix sincerely welcomes and appreciates the State Administration for Market Regulation’s merger clearance for the deal. SK Hynix will enhance its competitiveness of NAND Flash and SSD business by continuing the remaining post-merger integration process,” the company said in a statement.
SK Hynix shares closed up 2%, outpacing the KOSPI’s 0.3% rise.
(Reporting by Heekyong Yang and Ryan Woo; editing by Jason Neely)
