Amstrad Plc is an unlikely beneficiary of IBM Corp’s decision last year to cut off several of its European factories, averting tragic consequences for the Jrfalla ICC AB, which was formed last year to take over IBM’s printer plant in Sweden and complete development of a line of inkjet printers (CI No 2,376): a 65% stake in the new company was sold to venture capital group Atle AB with IBM Svenska AB retaining 35%, but the new company soon proved unviable and went into receivership at the beginning of the month; Amstrad is to set up a new company, Swedot Inkjet Industries AB to buy the assets of the failed company; it will hold a 67% stake, Xaar Ltd of Cambridge, which transferred inkjet technology to the failed company will have 5%, and Atle will stay aboard with 28%; Amstrad chairman Alan Sugar said the deal would enable the firm he founded to become a major player in the inkjet technology market.
Scotts Valley, California-based Seagate Technology Inc has reorganised into its three core product groups – Storage Products, Components, and Software; the Storage Products Group includes product research and development, worldwide manufacturing, materials and quality operations; the Components Group includes product research and development, worldwide manufacturing and quality; the Software Group includes Crystal Software, Palindrome Corp, Network Computing Inc, and NetLabs, and management of the firm’s stake in Dragon Systems Inc.
Raytheon Co, seeking to cut defence costs by $600m by 1999, has offered a buyout package to about 2,300 non-union employees in an effort to cut the unit’s headcount about 9%.
London-based Computer Management Group Plc has acquired a majority shareholding in Pecom Unternehmensberatung und Datenverarbeitung GmbH which has offices in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Zurich, the better to expand its German market.
AT&T Corp and 16 other telecommunications service providers will invest in Tagide 2, a 1,000-mile long undersea fibre-optic system between France and Portugal: by 1996, using Synchronous Digital Hierarchy, the new cable will provide a connection to the trans-Atlantic superhighway TAT-12/TAT-13 Cable Network.
Visa International says it plans to launch a Smart Card-based stored value card as an alternative to cash in the Asia-Pacific region.
Nynex Corp and Bell Atlantic Corp plan to invest up to $100m in Albany, New York-based CAI Wireless Systems Inc, the so-called wireless cable pioneer that uses cellular-type technology to distribute television: the two Bells said their goal is to speed delivery of video entertainment and information services to customers in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic states, and the deal gives them rights to use the distribution systems of CAI to begin offering digital video programming to customers as early as next year; in the first stage, the two will invest $15m each in exchange for senior secured debt bearing 12.5% interest maturing in the first quarter of 1996 and a warrant for a 20% equity interest in CAI; the funds will be used by CAI to repay debt and as a down-payment of about $4m on its planned acquisition of ACS Enterprises Inc; in the second stage, expected to close in July, the Bells will invest an additional $35m each in CAI in a non-voting 14% convertible preferred instrument; meantime CAI formally announced definitive agreement to acquire ACS, which operates wireless cable systems in Philadelphia, in Cleveland, and in Bakersfield, California and has wireless rights in Stockton and Modesto in California; CAI also has definitive agreements to acquire wireless cable systems and assets in Washington, DC, Baltimore, and Pittsburgh, paying $323m all told – $100m in cash, the rest in shares.
We had a vague feeling that there was nothing very new in the news that Compaq Computer Corp had a satellite office in San Mateo, California developing software (CI No 2,633), but everyone seemed to be getting so excited about the story that we thought we’d better run something and check later: th
e business was of course set up when Compaq acquired most of the assets of failed pen-driven software developer Slate Corp and eight former Slate employees were chartered to hang out their shingle in San Mateo as Compaq Software (CI No 2,347).
Deutsche Telekom AG finally has a new chief executive, confirming that Ron Sommer, president of Sony Europe, had got the job: a German national, he was born is Israel, educated in Austria and has been president and chief operating officer of Sony Europe since 1993 after heading Sony Corp of America for three years; he spent seven years in key posts at Nixdorf Computer.
Stimulating speakers are very thin on the ground but the Networld+Interop 95 trade show hit paydirt when it asked Pacific Bell Inc president Dave Dorman to give a keynote address, and he delivered a speech full of quotable little items such as that last year, Americans bought as many personal computers as television sets, and that At some moment in the next 100 days, more than half of all business communications industrywide will be data rather than voice;he’d rather have his kids – aged 12 and 10 – Net surfing than watching television – I know where they’ve been – based on system logs… and noting that you can buy an 80486 personal computer representing the computing power of 100m transistors for $1,000, he added Hey – you can’t buy 100m of anything for a thousand dollars – a hundred million sheets of toilet paper would run you over a hundred grand noting there’s more processing power in any new car today that there was in Apollo 11; oh and bad data makes for lousy decisions – The Battle of New Orleans in 1815 was fought for only one reason – they didn’t know the War of 1812 was over…
The European Commission yesterday cleared plans by Dassault Electronique SA to take a 34% stake in computerised defence systems firm CR2A-DI which is ultimately controlled by IBM Corp – it is a subsidiary of Compagnie Generale d’Informatique SA, bought by IBM France a couple of years ago, but Dassault will raise its stake to 50% in the second half of 1997 at the latest; the new company will control 25% of the French market for real-time defence computers.
British Telecommunications Plc reports that its payphone unit has won contracts worth #37m to install phones on premises of the London Underground and airport operator BAA Plc: the Underground deal is an extension of an existing five-year contract to supply 600 new payphones in the capital’s 248 underground stations and the BAA deal is for 1,400 telephones at BAA’s seven airports in England and Scotland.
GTE Corp’s GTE Telephone Operations has given AT&T Network Systems a $20m order for 60,000 more Integrated Services Digital Network lines.
ICL Plc is offering consultancy to personnel departments under the name EnterpriseHR, and is offering inter alia to show client companies how to change the way they go about hiring new recruits – at least that is what we think it means, although since resources is usually a euphemism for money these days, perhaps its all about cutting the payroll: what it actually says that it will be advising on is re-engineering the human resourcing processes.
