With Siemens AG deciding that it had too many problems of its own with Siemens-Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG to want to add those of SMT-Goupil SA to them, despite being 17%-owned by France Telecom, the Paris company has been forced to initiate bankruptcy proceedings, applying for a court administrator to be appointed. The administrator can either try to sell the company as a going concern or liquidate it. With Siemens out of the picture, the French government has been trying to persuade Ing C Olivetti & Co SpA to come to the rescue – as it did with LogAbax SA a decade ago in almost identical circumstances. According to the Wall Street Journal, a bankruptcy filing that would send accountants crawling through the company’s books was a condition of Olivetti getting involved. It is usually a lot cheaper to buy a company that is already declared bankrupt than one that is on the brink, because one can negotiate to buy the assets without taking on the liabilities. The main attraction of $136m-a-year Goupil is that it was treated for many years as the national personal computer champion by the French government and any new owner should have the French public sector market at its mercy.
