Seagate Acquires LaCie for $186 Million, Increases Consumer Market Offerings

LaCie and Seagate have done business before. So it’s no surprise that Seagate has scooped up this company. Seagate has offered to purchase 64.5% of the outstanding shares of LaCie. Following approval, Seagate will add a bigger consumer line of portable hard drives to their lineup.

“Seagate has a strong commitment to the growing consumer storage market and bringing the most dynamic products to market. LaCie has built an exceptional consumer brand by delivering exciting and innovative high-end products for many years. This transaction would bring a highly complementary set of capabilities to Seagate, significantly expand our consumer product offerings, add a premium-branded direct-attached storage line, strengthen our network-attached storage business line and enhance our capabilities in software development,” said Steve Luczo, Seagate chairman, president and CEO. “We are also excited that Philippe, who is a true visionary and leader in the consumer storage business, would join Seagate to run our consumer storage products organization.”

Philippe Spruch, LaCie’s chairman and CEO, will continue on as Seagate’s chief of consumer storage products division when the purchase is finalized in late 2012.

While at CES 2012, Todd Cochrane talked to LaCie. It will be interesting how