Apricot Computers Plc yesterday launched an agreed all-share bid for Britain’s last surviving independent minimaker, ITL Information Technology Plc – although the Hemel Hempstead company is rapidly phasing out its proprietary Momentum minicomputers and scarcely qualifies for the tag any more. The offer, 13 new Apricot shares for every 20 ITL held, values ITL shares at 41 pence apiece at the current Apricot price of 63 pence, representing a 64% premium on the 25 pence at which ITL was trading ahead of the bid. ITL leaped 13 pence to 38 pence on the announcement, and it looks like a done deal, because Apricot has aggregate irrevocable acceptances with respect to 53.4% of the shares. Biggest attraction for Apricot is clearly ITL’s maintenance business, which extends Apricot’s own support operations up into the minicomputer market; it also likes ITL’s involvement in the hospital and medical markets, and its network services business, which is significantly larger than Apricot’s own. ITL has been designing its own fault-tolerant processor to run the Sequoia Systems Inc fault-tolerant implementation of Unix, in the meantime buying Unix machines OEM from Motorola Inc, and expects both activities to continue, even though there is some overlap between the Sequoia systems and the multi-processor Unix machines that Apricot buys OEM from Sequent Computer Systems Inc. ITL now employs only 25 people in manufacturing, and there is no expectation of further layoffs to follow the ones made last year. ITL adds over UKP30m to Apricot’s annual turnover, currently running at just over UKP100m, and the company sees the move as contributing to its aim to reduce hardware to 55% of its business by 1990.
