Our impression that Hitachi Ltd was deliberately making life difficult for National Semiconductor Corp over transfer pricing, and the conclusion that National Advanced Systems may not be part of the NatSemi empire too much longer (CI No 1,027) has also been reached by Smith Barney, Harris, Upham & Co analyst James Barlage, coming from the other direction: he reckons that there is an increasing possibility that NatSemi will sell its systems business, of which National Advanced is the largest part, and reckons that the reorganisations in the business may well have been made to dress it up for sale and get a good price; it could be that Hitachi won’t want to buy it directly, in which case the likely buyer would be BASF AG and Siemens AG through their European Hitachi reseller Comparex Information Systems GmbH joint venture company, which said at its formation that it wants to get into the US market.
