The protracted negotiations for the sale of much of IBM’s Rolm Corp to Siemens AG are close to conclusion according to Reuter’s sources in Munich, and the sale should be consummated at the end of this month or early next – but it looks unlikely that IBM will get as much for the business as it had hoped. The difficulty in reaching agreement is believed to arise from Siemens hav ing taken a closer look and deciding it wasn’t prepared to pay the origi nal asking price, but the delay in completing the sale has done nothing to improve Rolm’s condition. According to Electronic News, the delays are costing Rolm business in an ov ercrowded US PABX market, with Gartner Group saying that Rolm sales ap peared to be substantially down in the first quarter while AT&T Co, Northern Telecom Ltd and Fujitsu Ltd recorded sales increases. Rolm hit a high of 19% of all US shipments last year but Northern Telecom reck ons that both it and AT&T added three or four percentage points of market share in the first quarter as potential customers worried about the uncertainty over Rolm’s future.
