OCZ has announced that it has signed an asset purchase agreement with Toshiba that will give Toshiba alll of OCZ's assets in a chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding for US $35 million.

According to the known and announced agreement details, these US $35 million will give Toshiba the entire client and enterprise solid state drive business. OCZ will continue to operate normally in the mean time and Toshiba will also provide financing to ensure that OCZ survives until the deal is finalized. Of course, the bankruptcy court still has to approve the asset purchase agreement.

By acquiring the entire OCZ's client and enterprise SSD business, Toshiba will get access to all OCZ's proprietary controllers, firmware and software as well as the entire teams responsible for bringing those to the market. While OCZ will get a steady supply of NAND from Toshiba, which according to some reports holds 40% of NAND market share and is the fourth largest IC company on the planet and if this deal goes through, Toshiba might have enough driving force to definitely step on Samsung's toes in the SSD market.

"Over the past year, OCZ has dealt with numerous issues which have stressed the company's capital structure and operating model, posing a challenge to achieving near term profitability. The combination of NAND flash supply constraints and credit issues have impacted our ability to satisfy the demands of our customers; this combined with increased pricing pressure in our industry have contributed to our on-going operating losses. On an operational basis, we completed a complex investigation, several restructurings and a multi-year restatement that added significantly to our working capital requirements," stated Ralph Schmitt, CEO of OCZ. "We have been working diligently on this partnership with Toshiba and we believe that this is the best outcome under our current corporate conditions."

"We are excited to participate in this opportunity. If our bid is successful, the combination of our leading NAND technology with OCZ's SSD expertise will allow us to further strengthen Toshiba's SSD business," said Mr. Seiichi Mori, Vice President of Toshiba's Semiconductor and Storage Company and Corporate Vice President of Toshiba. "We value OCZ's SSD business and technology in both the consumer and enterprise markets, and we are confident that it will reinforce our capabilities and help us to secure leadership in the SSD market."

The transaction has been already approved by the Board of Directors of OCZ and, according to the report, the sale is expected to close within 60 days.

Source: OCZ.com