Zentec Corp, Santa Clara, California, which has been picking up unconsidered trifles in the way of terminal systems businesses, most notably that of Lear Siegler Corp, and which in December agreed to acquire Qume Corp from Alcatel NV (CI No 845), has now itself agreed to be acquired by Data Technology Corp, also of Santa Clara. Under the proposed transaction, Data Technology Corp will pay about 2.4m shares for all outstanding common and preferred shares of Zentec, valuing the latter at an indicated $13.2m. As a result, Zentec has aborted its discussions to buy the business and assets of Qume Corp, which instead will be acquired by Data Technology, if it completes acquisition of Zentec. The moves represent a considerable diversification for all parties: Data Technology Corp designs and develops intelligent storage controllers and chip sets and has a removable cartridge disk drive that was jointly developed with Eastman Kodak; it also has a high resolution, non-impact printer line using liquid crystal shutter technology, which was developed by Casio Computer Corp. Zentec specialises in ASCII display terminals, and Qume is in display terminals and printers, mainly laser these days. Data Technology reported net profit of $2.5m on sales of $76m for the nine months to December, while Zentec did $620,000 net on turnover of $29m for the year to December 31.
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