Further details have emerged of the planned privatisation of Compagnie des Machines Bull SA after the announcement that NEC Corp, Motorola Inc and France Telecom will be the three major shareholders in a more fully privatised Bull. The shareholding arrangement of 17% for NEC, 17% for France Telecom, 10% for Motorola, and about 4% each for Dai Nippon Printing Co and IPC Corp Ltd, 1.78% for IBM Corp and between 5% and 10% for Bull employees, marks only an initial phase, bringing the state’s direct stake down to about 40%, if you conveniently forget that France Telecom is very much state-owned and still subject to government interference. In the ideal situation, a second phase will occur early next year, Bull chief executive Jean-Marie Descarpentries told Les Echos. At that time, Bull will have reported an end to its losses, Motorola will up its stake by 7%, reducing the state’s stake to between 30% and 32%, he said. Then the company’s capital would be opened up again to investors and industrial partners, at which time the company hopes to see the state’s share drop to between 8% and 10%. But, he warned, the partners that come later will not have the same conditions that were granted to those that have signed up now. He added that Bull employees would have another chance to invest in the second phase. Descarpentries confirmed that Motorola conditioned a greater-than-10% participation on Bull’s financial results and that the two companies will create a joint subsidiary into which I believe they will bring other interested PowerPC partners. The chief executive also said that he intends immediately to establish a strategic committee on which the three principal partners will be represented. We have worked a lot with all of them. They are all compatible and they haven’t come to dismember Bull, he remarked.

Complete gamut

He disavowed any conflict of interest for NEC, given that it has chosen Hewlett-Packard Co’s Unix servers. NEC wants to have MIPS, Intel and PowerPC. It wants the complete gamut, he said. No other spin-off plans are currently in the works, the chief said, even though it wouldn’t shock me to put our mainframes into a common NEC-Bull subsidiary. As far as lay-offs are concerned, Descarpentries remarked that the $200m or so that the privatisation brings him will reduce his debt service costs by some $20m, which will relieve him of the obligation to seek out job cuts. We will also save from synergies in purchasing. All of that reduces the need for restructuring. There will not be a worldwide job reduction plan. There will be projects by unit, if there is a need, he said. For this year, he looks for break-even as quickly as possible. Despite everything, the beginning of the year was difficult, but I’m still aiming for break-even after restructuring costs. In 1995, all activities at the end of the year should be breaking even. And, in 1996-97, under my plan, each division will be among the three best in the world. Without a partner, that would not have been possible, he said. As for his own position, it depends on the shareholders, he said, adding that he does not expect they would want to change presidents in mid-stream. Today, what appeared one and a half years ago as a mission impossible seems less impossible, but the bet is not yet won, he said.