WD gets even bigger

Western Digital is already a storage behemoth, and today it just got even bigger as it has officially cleared all regulatory hurdles in its purchase of solid state drive leader SanDisk. China’s Ministry of Commerce has finally OK’d the purchase, which makes SanDisk a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital.

“We are pleased to have received approval from MOFCOM, the final regulatory milestone for our combination with SanDisk,” said Steve Milligan, chief executive officer of Western Digital. “We look forward to closing the transaction and to integrating our two global businesses to create the leading storage solutions company.”

Western Digital had earlier ponied up $19 billion to purchase SanDisk, which incidentally owns a large chunk of the SSD and portable storage market.