Shearman & Sterling is advising Western Digital Corp. in the acquisition by its subsidiary, HGST, of Virident Systems, Inc. in a transaction valued at $685 million. Closing of the acquisition, which is subject to customary conditions, is expected to occur in the fourth calendar quarter of 2013.

Western Digital Corporation is a global provider of products and services that empower people to create, manage, experience and preserve digital content. Its subsidiaries design and manufacture storage devices, networking equipment and home entertainment products under the WD®, HGST and G-Technology brands.

HGST (formerly known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies or Hitachi GST), a Western Digital company, develops advanced hard disk drives, enterprise-class solid state drives, innovative external storage solutions and services used to store, preserve and manage the world’s most valued data. Founded by the pioneers of hard drives, HGST provides high-value storage for a broad range of market segments, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Personal Storage. HGST was established in 2003 and maintains its US headquarters in San Jose, California.

Virident is a provider of server-side flash storage for the enterprise that delivers unconditional, consistent performance to data-intensive applications. The inherent advantage associated with this technology revolutionizes computing by speeding application response time and optimizing datacenter efficiency for new levels of ROI.

The Shearman & Sterling team included partners Steve Camahort and Dana Kromm (both San Francisco-Mergers & Acquisitions) and associate Christine Huang (San Francisco-Mergers & Acquisitions). Other lawyers involved in the transaction include partners Richard Hsu (Palo Alto-Intellectual Property Transactions) and Doreen Lilienfeld (New York-Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits) and associates Zheng Bao (Palo Alto-Intellectual Property Transactions), Benjamin Petersen (Palo Alto-Intellectual Property Transactions), Kerry Neligan (New York-Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits), Valerie Petein (New York-Executive Compensation & Employee Benefits) and Antonio Herrera Cuevas (San Francisco-Capital Markets).

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