Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Acquires Freecom
Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., Ltd. (MKM) announced today the acquisition of Freecom B.V., a privately held data storage and multimedia solutions provider established in Germany with headquarters in Rijswijk, Netherlands and offices in Austria, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and United Kingdom. Effective September 1, 2009, the stock-funded acquisition includes all of Freecom’s physical assets, patents, trademarks, technology, engineering, sales and marketing expertise. The purchase price was not disclosed. With the acquisition, MKM adds Freecom to the MKM/Verbatim group. Verbatim is already a leading brand in the worldwide external storage market.
The Freecom acquisition represents yet another investment made by the MKM/Verbatim group aimed at the growing external hard disk drive (HDD) market. The asset acquisition of SmartDisk, made in June 2007, has proved successful in establishing MKM/Verbatim in both the portable and desktop external HDD markets on a global basis. By leveraging the strength of the Verbatim brand and channel relationships in the worldwide removable storage markets, the MKM/Verbatim external HDD business has grown more than 600 percent during the past two years.