Hitachi Ltd, Japan's biggest electronics maker, said on Tuesday it would pay $2.05 billion for the bulk of IBM's money-losing hard disk drive business and, dismissing market skepticism, vowed to return it to profit. The announcement fleshed out a deal struck in April when Hitachi said it would take over International Business Machines Corp's hard drive operations, combining them with its own in a joint venture. Hitachi will initially hold 70 percent of the venture and plans to take full ownership after three years. Grilled at a briefing on whether Hitachi over-paid, Senior Vice President Masaaki Hayashi said: "Considering the intellectual property, the excellent personnel and based upon advice of outside consultants, we thought this was a fair price."
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