The Tokyo business daily Nikkei Shimbun has firmed up earlier stories about the imminent purchase by Hitachi Ltd and Comparex Computer Systeme GmbH of National Semiconductor Corp’s National Advanced Systems arm, setting the sale price at $300m and ownership at 60% Hitachi, 40% Comparex. That would imply that Hitachi would take the US operations and Comparex would get Europe, but some other arrangement may be planned. There was no mention of the posited sleeping partner to give the US operations a fig-leaf of Americanness to avoid hurting the sensibilities of users unwilling to buy mainframes from an overtly Japanese firm. NatSemi again declined to make any comment.
National Advanced Systems France SA says that while turnover for the six months to November was scarcely changed at about $50m the company still looks to do $117m this year against $91m last. The company now has 23 large systems installed an on order against 14 a year ago, has 96 customers all told and orders are up 70% from a year ago.
