The bad blood between the two companies over GEC’s attempt to acquired Plessey, which was blocked by the Monopolies Commission made it highly unlikely that the two would find an easy agreement on collaborating on the System X telephone exchange, so it is no surprise that the talks are in trouble: according to the Financial Times, Plessey wants an equally-owned joint venture on everything but manufacture of System X, while GEC is looking for much more limited collaboration to reduce costs.
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