Norsk Data AS is the despair of City analysts in the wake of its enormous 1988 losses and decision to downsize the company by 20%, so much so that takeover by a larger company is seen as almost the only way of halting the decline – but as soon as it is recognised that Norsk is in a position to deliver to a suitor a large part of the Scandinavian computer market, the company begins to look attractive to a host of US and European companies, not least ICL, which could certainly afford to add Norsk’s areas of expertise in systems for the publishing industry and computer aided design to its current ones, and while fairly strong in Scandinavia needs to be a whole lot stronger – but similar calculations will be being made in Paris, Helsinki, Munich and Paderborn, in Ivrea if it has recovered from the shock of its last Norwegian adventure, taking control of Scanvest Ring AS and finding a can of worms – and perhaps even in Manchester, home of Ferranti Computer Systems Ltd, if the company is able to get a rights issue away on the back of its Telepoint licence.
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