Honeywell Inc is not the company it was since it threw in the towel and handed its big computer business over to Compagnie des Machines Bull SA, but is probably a lot healthier concentrating on process control equipment and building controls than it would have been had it hung on to the computers. But the Minneapolis company reckons it is time to give growth a shove and yesterday announced that it would Measurex Corp for $35 a share cash, $600m all told. The transaction is expected to strengthen Honeywell’s position as a supplier of control systems, services and products for the worldwide pulp and paper manufacturing industry. The companies acknowledged that a rationalization of redundant functions will occur, but did not specify how many people might lose their jobs. Measurex will be run within Honeywell Industrial Automation & Control; it has offices in 34 countries and had 1996 sales of $287m; as well as paper, it supplies computer-integrated measurement, control and information systems and services to the plastics, rubber, non-wovens, steel and non-ferrous metals sectors, providing Honeywell with further opportunities in these industrial sectors.
