While the former East Germany’s Robotron AG holding company prepares for liquidation, a number of deals made over the last two years between former divisions of the old computer Kombinat and Western companies that have brought forth several smaller businesses that look set to survive. Heading up the list of Westerners that took advantage of the opening of the East German market are, predictably enough, Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme AG and IBM Deutschland GmbH. Both companies have stakes in former Robotron divisions, sharing ownership with old Robotron concerns that are now held by the Treuhand – the government agency set up to privatise East German state enterprises.

Dresden

Former software development division Robotron Projekt GmbH Dresden – with a mere 115 employees compared with previous levels of over 1,000 – now exists as a software distributor reselling business and communications software packages from different suppliers, with little in-house development at present. More interesting is the minority interest it has in SRS Software und Systemhaus GmbH, in which Siemens Nixdorf and Walldorf-based software developer SAP AG have taken equal 45% stakes. SRS, headquartered in Dresden, employs 310 people and it is involved mainly in consultancy and the installation of systems based around SAP’s R/2 office automation software and Siemens Nixdorf’s Comfoware package running under MS-DOS and OS/2. SRS estimates that it will end 1991 with a turnover equivalent to $16.5m, and emphasises that it will be in profit. Meanwhile, Siemens Nixdorf is exploiting a joint venture with Computerelektronik Dresden GmbH to establish its SNI Osteuropa production facilities in the same city. Computerelektronik employs around 800 staff, chiefly ex-Robotron, and it manufactures Siemens D2 and D3 personal computers, MX300 Sinix Unix machines, and 7.500 H60 mainframes. Turnover stands at around $86m a year, and it has confirmed that it will launch its own range of MS-DOS computer systems. A spokesman for the company acknowledges that the market is tight, but he says that Computerelektronik will do its best. Another former Robotron division, Acosta AG, has held its position as 51% shareholder of CSD Computer-Systemdienste alongside IBM Deutschland, which took the other 49% when the business was formed in late 1990. CSD, based in Chemnitz, is a system integrator employing 240 staff and according to IBM, is experiencing stable growth. The same cannot be said of the proposed joint venture between Robotron Projekt Dresden and EDS Deutschland in computer bureau services. The partnership was established in September 1990 and had it been successful, it would have been a $120m a year business employing around 1,000 people.

By Mark John

But in fact, the idea was finally dismissed as unviable at the negotiation stage, Electronic Data Systems Corp confirms. The exact total of former operating divisions still in business is not known even by Robotron, but a spokesman estimates that around 10 major concerns survive. Apart from Projekt Dresden, CSD and SRS, Robotron’s old Bromaschinenwerk division – renamed as Smtron GmbH – has received a boost with contracts from NCR Corp to assemble 20,000 cash register machines, and from the Taiwanese Aquarius Inc for personal computers. Drive-maker Robotron Praezisiontechnik und Elektronik was known to be ekeing out a separate existence back in June (CI No 1705), and a business trading as Computer und Bureau Ausstattung has been formed by former Robotron employees to distribute Nokia equipment to various Eastern European countries. Also, the Bonn-based Unix systems integrator, Garmhausen & Partner, is known to be using ex-Robotron units to penetrate the east of the country. This decentralised structure goes back to a decision made by Friedrich Wokurka, who headed the 70,000 staff company before the German Democratic Republic collapsed in 1989. He intended to give Robotron some degree of bargaining power as it received the attentions of one Western computer company after another – at one time, the number of poten

tial deal-makers, partners and buyers was thought to total 25. By February 1990, IBM Deutschland had concluded a deal with Robotron under which it would maintain the estimated 500 EC1050, EC1045 and EC1040 IBM 360-like mainframes Robotron had sold into the Comecon countries. Anxious not to have Robotron filched from under its nose, Siemens immediately announced its intention to take a majority stake in Robotron. Wokurka left Robotron in August of that year, and while his decision to create a separate entities has clearly saved a few of them, it has also served Western companies by making it easier to pick and choose. The ultimate aim of creating an AktienGesellschaft was to have shares listed on the German stock exchanges, but far from getting a quotation anywhere, the Robotron AG holding will not even leave the Treuhand, which, according to one employee, has deemed it incapable of competing effectively.

Liquidation

No-one is sure which activities will stop when it goes into liquidation, but according to Reuter, 2,500 jobs are to be lost as a result, which makes it likely that Robotron AG was intended to control whatever remained of the computer manufacturing activities not covered by the Computerelektronik Dresden-Siemens Nixdorf deal. Asked why it had taken so long for the authorities to make a decision on the company’s future, sources say that Robotron was holding out for a last-minute deal with Siemens-Nixdorf, but it proved impossible to reach an agreement. When asked if the possibility of taking any more of Robotron out of the Treuhand had ever been discussed in the weeks leading up to the liquidation announcement, both SNI Osteuropa and Siemens Nixdorf in Munich denied knowledge of any such negotiation – the company seemed quite happy with the parts of Robotron it already has. A fixed date has not yet been set for the official closure of Robotron AG, but the administrative clerk thought the process would be a lengthy one.