The plan by Acer Inc, Taipei, Taiwan to spin off 21 business units into indepdendent companies by the start of the next century is intended to create a federation of companies around the world united by common core technologies and the global Acer brand name – something like the model that John Akers was building for IBM Corp until his time ran out and Louis Gerstner came in to put all his reforms into reverse. Explaining its reasoning for the diaspora, Acer says it must re-engineer itself into a global company to remain competitive – technology markets change too fast and Acer has too broad a product line to afford the luxury of centralised control, it says, conceiving a new transnational Acer on a client-server model, that thinks globally and acts locally. It will create a new company that will consist of core technology operations in Taiwan and regional sales, marketing, product integration and service operations around the world. Acer will hold only a minority of the equity in each business unit, selling the remaining stake to local investors, with its stake in some units to be as low as 19%. Affiliated companies are likely to be listed on stock exchanges in Singapore, Malaysia, Mexico, and the US once the plan is complete. The first two to go will be Acer Peripherals Inc and Acer Sertek Inc, both of which are scheduled to go public on the Taiwan Stock Exchange before the end of this year. Acer Peripherals manufactures and markets keyboards, monitors and facsimile machines and operates plants in Taiwan and Malaysia, with plans for a keyboards and monitors plant in Shuzou, China next year. The company is not small: sales in 1993 came to $340m. Acer Sertek operates a distribution and network and a chain of 120 AcerLand franchised computer stores for sales of Acer-branded products and other computer products in Taiwan. It empolys 800 people and had sales of $210m last year. Othe candidates for spinning off include the Computec De Mexico SA joint venture in 1995; Acer America Inc and Singapore-based Acer Computer International Inc in 1996; Penang, Malaysia-based Acer Technologies Sdn Bhd and joint venture memory chip maker TI-Acer Inc in 1997 or 1998.
