Less than 24 hours after BBC televiewers had seen Sir John Harvey-Jones telling the company the last thing that it wanted to hear, that it should sell its personal computer manufacturing arm, Apricot Computers Plc announced that it had reached agreement to do just that. The buyer, as expected (CI No 1,395), is Mitsubishi Electric Corp, and the price is UKP39m – UKP4m up on the price at which we understand Commodore International Ltd dropped out of the bidding – subject to a net assets adjustment. The sale includes the Glenrothes factory, the research and development and sales and marketing facilities in Birmingham, and the wholly-owned Australian subsidiary. Underlining what a low-margin business computer manufacturing is, the agreed price is only a little over half fiscal 1989 turnover of UKP70.8m, on which the business made operating profits before group charges and interest, of UKP2.5m. It employs 400 people and no redundancies are planned. The Apricot name will survive because the hardware business will trade as Apricot Computers Ltd, a UK subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric (UK) Ltd, and Apricot, harking back to its Applied Computer Techniques roots, will change its name again, this time to ACT Group Plc. The new ACT will continue to market Apricot computers to large end users, will be the approved supplier of maintenance for at least three years, will continue to provide warranty services and will retain sole UK spare parts distribution rights. The two companies hope to collaborate in other areas. Apricot looks for completion by the end of next month, provided its shareholders give the nod – and Apricot is encouraging their votes with a special fivepence a share dividend. The new ACT Group looks for annual sales of UKP80m and will employ 1,300 people; the proceeds of the sale will eliminate its debt. It will then consist of ACT Computer Support, the ACT Logsys systems integration division, ACT Financial Systems, ACT Medisys medical information systems and ACT Cablestream network integration.