A venerable name, Honeywell-Bull, that belonged to a French-based company 66%-owned by Honeywell until 1976, is revived for the new firm that takes over Honeywell’s computer interests in the US, the UK, Italy, Australia and the Far East, on April 1. Honeywell-Bull Inc will be head-quartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota with Bull chief Jacques Stern as its president and Honeywell vice-president Jerome Meyer as chief executive. It excludes Honeywell’s Federal Systems Division and the Honeywell-NEC company formed to market NEC supercomputers in North America, and if it had existed at the end of last year, would have reported 1986 turnover of $1,892m, 52% of it outside the US. It has 20,500 employees, 9,000 outside the US, and has manufacturing plants in the US, Italy and the UK. Compagnie des Machines Bull will initially hold 42.5% of the new Honeywell-Bull Inc, for which it is paying $131m, Honeywell will retain another 42.5%, and NEC Corp will pay $46m for 15%. But Honeywell has set a price of $527m on the company, which will owe the $350m balance. After two years, Bull will have the right to raise its stake to 65.1%, which would reduce Honeywell’s holding to 19.9%; that in turn would mean that it no longer had to consolidate Honeywell-Bull’s financial figures with its own.
