China has granted conditional approval for SK Hynix’s acquisition of Intel’s NAND business.

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) posted on its website Wednesday that it had decided to grant conditional approval for SK Hynix’s takeover of Intel’s NAND memory chip business.

SAMR said that it made its approval contingent on a ban on written or verbal contracts eliminating or restricting competition by rival Chinese businesses.

The announcement Wednesday marked the conclusion of clearance procedures in the eight countries and organizations reviewing the merger of the two companies, namely South Korea, the US, Taiwan, Singapore, the European Union, the UK, Brazil and China.

In October 2020, SK Hynix signed a contract with Intel to acquire its NAND business for US$9 billion.

SK Hynix plans to complete the remaining working-level procedures shortly, after which it is to pay an initial acquisition cost of US$7 billion and receive Intel’s assets in the Chinese city of Dalian, including its solid-state drive (SSD) business and factory.

The aim had been to complete the merger of the two companies within the year. But as China’s review became dragged out amid the effects of the recent US-China battle for technological dominance, some had been speculating that the merger could end up falling by the wayside. The SAMR's decision means that the acquisition will be able to go ahead before the end of the year.

With this acquisition, SK Hynix moves from fourth to second place in the NAND flash industry. According to figures from the market research firm Omdia, SK Hynix ranked fourth with a 12.4% NAND market share as of the second quarter of 2021, while Intel ranked sixth with a 6.7% share.

By Sun Dam-eun, staff reporter

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