L M Ericsson Telefon AB is to acquire most of the telecommunications operations of Elektrisk Bureau AS, Oslo, and will sell its road and railway signalling business to the Norwegian company, which is 60%-owned by Asea Brown Boveri Co. The move is in furtherance of Ericsson’s commitment to concentrate on its core business of telecommunications. It is taking the Telenet operations, which develops and makes equipment for digital telephone switches, including a manufacturing plant in Hisy, Norway, and will also buy Elektrisk Bureau’s communications control systems business for military command centres and banks, and a 50% stake in its defence communications business to create a jointly-owned defence communications company in Norway. It also gets the rest of the EB-Ericsson joint venture and the businesses in aggregate employ 700 and do $104m a year. The sign alling business going the other way employs 1,000 people in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Spain and Australia and looks to do $118m this year. Ericsson did not say whether any cash would be changing hands.
