By Greg Gao

Chinese technology conglomerate Tsinghua Unigroup(清华紫光) acquired a 49 percent stake in H3C through Unisplendour International Technology (紫光国际), a wholly-owned subsidiary under Tsinghua Unigroup, from Hewlett Packard Enterprise(HPE), an American multinational information technology company, according to an announcement released by Tsinghua Unigroup on January 3.

The proposed deal is pending regulatory approval. After completing this transaction, Tsinghua Unigroup will hold 100% of H3C’s equity.

H3C is currently a joint venture between Texas-based HPE and Beijing-based Tsinghua Unigroup. It offers customers a complete portfolio of enterprise IT solutions, including networking, servers, storage, hyper-converged systems, and IT management products. H3C was initially incorporated in 2003 as a joint venture between Huawei Technologies Co and US telecoms firm 3Com, rereported SCMP.

As of the disclosure date of Tsinghua Unigroup’s announcement, the company holds 51% of the stake in H3C through its subsidiary Unisplendour International. While HPE, through its wholly-owned subsidiary H3C Holdings Limited and Izar Holding Co, respectively, holds 48% and 1% stakes in H3C.

The sale price per share will be determined by dividing a cash sum equivalent to 15 times the post-tax profit of H3C after deducting non-recurring gains and losses in the 12 months before April 30, 2022, by the total number of shares of H3C on the date of the announcement, according to the two parties.

Unigroup, affiliated with the prestigious Tsinghua University, sank to bankruptcy in July 2021 after years of debt-driven acquisitions in the semiconductor industry. It completed debt restructuring and ownership change to a consortium of Wise Road and JAC Capital in July 2022.