The formal offer document from GEC Siemens Plc for Plessey Co Plc sheds little further light on the two companies’ plans for parcelling up Plessey should they win it – no word, for example, on the future of Hoskyns Group Plc – but Siemens does disclose the previously secret figure that it will pay IBM for the Rolm Corp assets it has agreed to buy: the price is between $844m and $1,150m depending on future profitability at Rolm; IBM paid $1,500m for the company in 1984, and it is thought to have lost some $100m or so a year over the past four years.
