Tandy Corp says it expects to close the sale of its personal computer manufacturing business to AST Research Inc on about July 15: AST will take on about 2,000 employees, leaving about 100 people from Tandy’s computer divisions in Fort Worth and about 70 at Grid’s headquarters in Westlake, Texas, plus as many as 150 more elsewhere in the US and 180 in Europe without jobs; because of the additional bureaucracy involved, sale of the French assets is expected to occur about 30 days after the July 15 closing date; the purchase price will be determined in accordance with provisions of the definitive agreement and the completion of an audit and Tandy will continue to market and service computers via all of its retail divisions and its Radio Shack stores will continue to sell a proprietary line of Tandy computers; AST gets three manufacturing facilities in Texas, and one in Scotland; a three-year supply agreement with Tandy; Tandy’s pen-based and multimedia personal computer technologies, including a portfolio of over 60 computer-related patents; and GRiD sales units.
