Siemens AG’s convincing impression of West Germany’s patronising Federal Chancellor, Helmut Kohl when it said that it would like to take a controlling stake in the German Democratic Republic’s principal computer and office equipment enterprise, VEB Kombinat Robotron (CI No 1,360), has not gone down at all well with Robotron’s chairman, Friedrich Wokurka. He says that Robotron intends to reorganise as a holding company and a series of subsidiaries by mid-year and will then offer minority shareholdings to several Western computer companies – but that the 70,000 employee computer and office equipment business has no intention of being split up or ceding overall control.
