It doesn’t seem to have penetrated US boardrooms or the US Congress that spokesmen for the African National Congress regularly express dismay at US and European companies disinvesting from South Africa – or perhaps the companies simply want to disengage from what they see as a no-win situation and win a few Brownie points in the process. As reported (CI No 999), Unisys Corp is the latest to lay down the burden, disposing of its South African operation in a complex deal worth some $50m – and the buyer, Mercedes Datakor Pty Ltd, promptly took a share in a local Unix specialist Unidata Pty, both to use its name for the former Unisys South Africa and to obtain a stake in its Unix skills. The Unisys acquisition was largely funded by Sanlam Investment Corp, which as a result took control of Datakor’s holding company Mercedes Information Technologies: Mercedes Datakor is now renamed Datakor, and including the Unidata operation will have a turnover of some $167m, enabling it to claim to be South Africa’s second largest information technology group. Unisys’ disposal of its South African operation was initiated in April, when Hill Samuel was appointed to find a buyer: the South African operation did just under $100m last year and revenues this year were forecast at $105m. The original Unidata, which will now be renamed, will supply support to both Datakor users and others.
