Olicom A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark has agreed to pay $46.5m cash, plus shares with an indicated value of $36.6m, and three-year warrants to acquire $0.1075 of an Olicom share at a price equivalent to $19.74 a share, for Marlborough, Massachusetts- based Ethernet switch and board maker CrossComm Corp. The acquisition, to be accounted for as a purchase, will result in Olicom taking a significant non-recurring charge in the second quarter to write off in-process research and development and other acquisition-related expenses. Olicom, selling a broad range of Token Ring, Fast Ethernet and Asynchronous Transfer Mode local network products, is particularly interested in $50m-a-year CrossComm’s AsynchronousTransfer Mode and router technology for mainframes. The companies will develop products for both the IBM Corp mainframe and client server environments. It says Crosscom will save it 18 months’ development time.
