Fujitsu Ltd, through its 80% affiliate ICL Plc, is paying UKP330m to take a dominant position in the Scandinavian computer market with the acquisition of Nokia Oy’s loss-making Nokia Data Systems, which is primarily the former Ericsson Information Systems and is strong in display terminals, particularly for airlines, banking terminals, and personal computers. The price is split UKP50m cash, UKP180m in preference shares, half of them redeemable, the other half convertible into 5% of ICL when the company is floated on the London International Stock Exchange, and UKP100m in assumption of debt. ICL is already well placed in Scandinavia, particularly in Denmark, where it has 50% of RC International A/S, sucessor company to Regnecentralen. It was becoming clear by late 1989 that Nokia would have to sell one of its three main electronic businesses – Data, cellular telephones and equipment, and consumer electronics – in order to have sufficient resources to invest in the surviving two, and as the loss-maker, Data was the best bet – as we suggested at the time, ICL was the first name in the frame for what might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to gain a dominant position in the Scandinavian computer market. Like ICL, Nokia majors on the Sparc and the 80486 for its Unix offerings, so the companies are a good fit. Nokia Data adds some UKP700m of annual turnover to ICL, taking it over the UKP2,000m mark. It also adds 7,000 employees to ICL’s 21,000.
