James Chung

Samsung Electronics Co. announced a major restructuring Friday, consolidating business operations into two divisions as South Korea's most powerful and iconic corporation deals with the slowing global economy and expectations of looming red ink.

The new organization was included in an announcement of personnel changes at the company as well as at the broader Samsung Group of which it serves as flagship.

Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday it has withdrawn a $26 a share bid to acquire SanDisk Corp., but suggested it was still interested in buying the U.S. flash memory card maker at a lower price.

In a letter dated and released Wednesday, Samsung Vice Chairman and CEO Lee Yoon-woo informed SanDisk's board that "we are no longer interested in acquiring SanDisk at $26 a share."

The letter said the offer was being withdrawn "after nearly six months of efforts to pursue a transaction with no meaningful progress."

A major consolidation of the flash-memory market may be in the works. Samsung, the world's largest memory manufacturer, says it may make an offer for SanDisk, which makes flash-memory chips. SanDisk is valued at $3.2 billion.

The flash-memory space has been under extreme pressure with prices falling. The deal would allow Samsung to eliminate its costs to license SanDisk technology.

"We are looking at various opportunities regarding SanDisk, but nothing has been decided yet," Samsung spokesperson James Chung said in response to rumors.

Samsung Electronics said Thursday it was consolidating some of its key businesses a week after announcing a new executive lineup.

Samsung that it would merge its home theater, DVD and Blu-ray player businesses with its global No. 1 TV business as part of what it called a restructuring plan.

It will also move its digital music player, laptop computer and set-top box businesses from its digital media business to the telecommunications network business.

Set-top boxes bring Internet movie downloads to TV sets.