Veritas and Seagate move closer to merger completion

Veritas Software announced yesterday that the US Federal trade Commission (FTC) has approved its merger with Seagate Software's Network and Storage Management Group.

The $1.6bn deal was announced in October but under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act the company was required to file pre-merger reports with the FTC and the Department of Justice, and to wait a specified period of time before completing the deal. The act gives the government time to review and challenge mergers that may violate anti-trust laws.

According to the storage giant the Act expired on 4 December without opposition from either agency.

The take-over of Seagate's storage arm is intended to boost Veritas' range and depth of data storage management products. While Veritas is traditionally strong in the high-end enterprise market, Seagate's success has been in the desktop back-up area. Together, the two companies promise to bring a top-to-bottom storage solution to end users, including backup and recovery, core operating system-level storage, storage resource management and high availability.

Pending shareholder approval and a Securities Exchange Commission Review, Veritas hopes to complete the deal by February - a month later than originally expected.