NEC, Casio And Hitachi To Form New JV Company

The mobile terminal business is in for a shake-up. With effect from May 1, 2010, a new company is coming into existence. This company is called NEC Casio Mobile Communications Ltd (NCMCL).

The new company will have its headquarters in Kawasaki City in the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan, and will be housed in the NEC Tamagawa plant. The company will begin its innings with a capital of JPY 1 billion. The shareholding pattern of the investors in the new company is as follows: NEC – 66%, Casio – 17.34% and Hitachi – 16.66%. By the end of June 2010, one round of capital increase will take place, through which the new capital will become JPY 5 billion. After this increase, NEC will come to hold 70.74%.

For the JV company, NEC and NCMCL have signed a corporate spin-off contract. A merger agreement between NCMCL and Casio Hitachi Mobile Communications Co Ltd (CHMC) has been signed whereby NCMCL will completely integrate NEC’s Mobile Terminal Operations Unit with CHMC. This integration includes the unit’s sales, development, manufacturing and maintenance strengths.

Mr Koji Yamasaki, Executive GM of the Mobile Terminal Operations Unit of NEC will be the new company’s President.

Read more about the latest alignments and alliances in the mobile terminal domain, here.

Siemens Offloads Stake In JV With Fujitsu Computers

Maarssen, Netherlands-based Fujitsu-Siemens Computers (FSC) is becoming a wholly Fujitsu-owned subsidiary.

Founded on October 1, 1999, the company was a joint venture between Munch-based Siemens AG and Tokyo-based Fujitsu Ltd, with both holding 50% shares. In a span of 9 years, the company had positioned itself as a leading European IT infrastructure provider with a strong focus on next-gen mobility and dynamic data center products, services and solutions.  FSC has manufacturing and developing facilities in four cities in Germany and one at Sunnyvale, California, USA. With 10,500 employees across 36 countries, of which 6,000 are employed in its German facilities alone, the company had clocked a gross revenue of Euro 6.6 billion and PBT of Euro 105 million in the year ending 31 March 2007.

According to reports, for Siemens the divestment will mean cash inflow of between Euro 400 to 500 million, which it intends to plough back in its core businesses of energy, industry and healthcare. The latest offloading of stake is part of Siemens’ overall strategy to cut costs and focus more on its strengths, in the face of the ongoing global economic meltdown. The final decision apparently was taken after reviewing the lower-than-expected performance of the company in the past few years.

While competitors such as China’s Lenovo, Dell and HP had indicated interest in buying Siemens’ stake, Fujitsu has agreed to buy back the shares, though the acquisition will cost it higher than what it pays to Siemens, because of the inbuilt employee pension obligations.

Read more about the stake sale here.