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It's official: Siemens sells out to Fujitsu

Joint venture splits, CEO quits

Siemens is selling its 50 per cent stake in Fujitsu-Siemens Computers to Fujitsu.

Fujitsu is paying €450m for the half share, and the deal is expected to close 1 April 2009. During negotiations FSC's president and CEO Bernd Bischoff resigned for personal reasons - he will be replaced by current CFO Kai Flore.

The deal will strengthen Fujitsu's hand in the European market for storage, servers and services. It also gives Fujitsu a PC and laptop business which it is believed to be trying to get rid of.

Although there is no official word it is still expected to sell on the consumer PC business, with Lenovo, which bought IBM's PC business, one possible buyer.

In January of this year Siemens group set ambitious profit margin targets for its major markets - industry, energy and healthcare. Healthcare is expected to run on margins of between 14 and 17 per cent.

In the low-margin computer business Fujitsu-Siemens made net sales of €6.6bn and made an operating income of €72m. Consumer PCs made up 19 per cent of this, business PCs 28 per cent and servers 24 per cent. Maybe Siemens thinks it can do better elsewhere.

The fully-Fujitsu firm is expected to focus on better margin server and storage sales along with associated services.

The joint-venture was set up in 1999 under a ten year agreement due to end next year. It employs over 10,000 people, just over half of them in Germany. ®

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