Struggling Esprit Systems Corp, once the famous terminals division of Haseltine Corp but now a shadow of its former self, says it has reached a preliminary agreement that will give it $6m in working capital from an equity investment group led by ADI Corp of Taiwan, which now makes its displays and is already its largest shareholder. The deal involves the issue of 16m new shares. Esprit and ADI are also attempting to arrange a $6.5m guaranteed bank loan to replace Esprit’s trade credit and security agreement with ADI. Since January, Michael Tsai has been president and chief executive and he has recruited several top managers to develop and implement a comprehensive turnaround plan for the Melville, New York company. With the new equity investment, Esprit hopes to continue to introduce new products and provide greater marketing resources to support its resellers, and fund new business development. Esprit recently signed a $1m agreement with Vitek for its ASCII/ANSI terminals and LANTerm, the first of its networking terminals.
