IBM Corp is not going to buy Northgate Computer Corp – it has seen the Eden Prairie, Minnesota assembler and mass marketer of cheap personal computers snapped up from under its nose by Everex Systems Inc, of Fremont, California: Everex said that it had been negotiating with Northgate in parallel with IBM. The price for the loss-making $150m-a-year firm is a lowly $4.3m to be met by issue of 750,000 new Everex shares. The deal is still only at the letter-of-intent stage. Everex wants the company in order to add mail order to its sales channels – it currently goes through distributors, resellers and chain stores, and it also liked its large corporate user base and record of providing good service.
