In the wake of its merger with Packard Bell Electronics Inc, the Zenith Data Systems acquisition of Compagnie des Machines Bull SA looks very close to being a total loss for the company. Yesterday, a bloodbath was announced in the US as a result of the merger, with the Buffalo Grove, Illinois headquarters being closed with a loss of 350 jobs, and the manufacturing, logistics and operations base in St. Joseph, Michigan closing with a loss of 570 jobs. The surviving parts of the company include the server business, which was created after the acquisition and is housed not in a Zenith location but in the old Honeywell Information Systems minicomputer base in Billerica, Massachusetts. Also spared were customer services in Montgomery, Alabama, ZDS Federal Systems office in Herndon, Virginia, and the Swan Technologies subsidiary based in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Zenith’s desktop and notebook engineering, marketing and support move to the main Packard Bell base in Sacramento, California and the service side transfers to Packard Bell’s Magna, Utah base whence part of the company fled after the Northridge earthquake.
