The threat that one of the last remaining US-owned semiconductor capital equipment manufacturing businesses, Perkin Elmer Corp’s Semiconductor Equipment Group, would pass into Japanese hands, seems to have been averted. Electronic News hears that IBM is bankrolling Silicon Valley Group Inc to buy much of it, and that definitive agreement is likely by the end of the month. Silicon Valley is negotiating for the Optical Lithography Operation in Norwalk, Connecticut, with IBM helping out with the price and committing to equipment purchases, but the Electron Beam Technology unit in Hayward, California may be hived off to management.
