On May 5, 2006, FCI signed an agreement for the sale of its Electrical Power Interconnect (EPI) European and Asian activities to the SICAME group.

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This agreement does not include EPI activities in Japan and in the Americas, where FCI markets its products under the well recognized Burndy brand name. With this divestiture, FCI reinforces its focus on its strongest positions in terms of market share and growth potential. This particularly relates to its automotive, communication, data, consumer and microconnection businesses as well as selective applications in the electrical distribution market.

SICAME is an international group that offers products and services for electricity transportation and distribution, including safety systems and equipment. The integration of EPI Europe and Asia activities within SICAME will permit the company to broaden its product offering and to reinforce its position in emerging countries.

Jean-Lucien Lamy FCI Chairman & Pierre François SICAME Executive Board Chairman

According to evertiq's sources, Norwegian PCB distributor Elmatica A/S has bought PCB design firm Nordic Printdesign.
May 03, 2006 09:47 (evertiq)
Elmatica and Nordic Printdesign will together have a total of 32 employees. The turnover in 2005 was 13 million Euros. No figures of the transaction have been revealed.

Le holding contrôlé par la famille Wendel a repris Deutsch pour 1,04 milliard de dollars (834 millions d'euros). Spécialisé dans la fabrication de connecteurs pour des marchés variés (aéronautique, défense, véhicules lourds, exploitation pétrolière, télécommunications), la société compte parmi ses clients EADS, Boeing, Dassault Systèmes, Safran, Ferrari, John Deere ou Renault. Son chiffre d'affaires s'est élevé à 500 millions de dollars l'an dernier, dont 40 % réalisé en Europe et 20 % en France. La croissance annuelle était de « 15 % ces dernières années », précise Wendel. Fondé en 1938, Deutsch emploie 3.500 personnes réparties sur 10 sites, dont trois en France.

Pour Wendel, il s'agit d'une première puisque le holding limitait jusqu'à présent son champ d'action à la France. « C'est une affaire familiale correspondant bien à notre philosophie d'investissement », disait-on hier au siège de la société tout en soulignant que plusieurs entreprises du portefeuille opèrent à l'échelle mondiale. D'un point de vue financier, Wendel limite son apport à 350 millions de dollars, le reste étant apporté sous forme de dette. Il contrôlera 89 % du capital « aux côtés du management, qui en détiendra le solde ».

Kimball Electronics Group, Inc., through its related subsidiaries, announced today that the Company has entered into an agreement with Magna Donnelly to produce printed circuit board assemblies. Kimball Electronics Group, Inc., a subsidiary of Kimball International, Inc., is a global contract electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company that specializes in durable electronics with applications in the automotive, medical, industrial controls, and public safety industries.
Under the terms of the agreement, Kimball Electronics acquired Magna Donnelly's PCB (Printed Circuit Board) assembly operation in Longford, Ireland. The two companies have agreed to combine their efforts in a long term manufacturing strategy to support the needs of the Magna Donnelly automotive mirror business.

LONDON — The management team of distributor BFi OPTiLAS has completed a buy out of the company which has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Avnet Corp for over 10 years following the acquisition of BFI Ibexsa in 1995 and its subsequent merger with Optilas in 1998.
It has operated as a completely autonomous organization within Avnet's European Electronics Marketing Group.
BFi OPTiLAS's management team engaged independent private equity firm, Activa Capital, in order to acquire a majority stake in the company. Activa Capital manages over €185million Euros of investments. Avnet will retain a minority stake in the company.
BFi OPTiLAS will continue to expand its operation as a pan European distributor of products and services for the electronic and photonic market places. The company focuses on niche technology products such as magnetic materials, lasers, sensors, connectors, electro-optics, imaging, fibre optics, RF and microwave components, systems and assemblies. The company operates from 12 offices throughout Europe, employing 300 staff.

La société de réparation A Novo (4500 personnes, 282 millions d'euros de chiffre d'affaires) vient d'acquérir Engström Telecom (8 millions d'euros de CA), réparateur de téléphones portables et société de logistique opérant en Suède. Avec entre 275 000 et 300 000 interventions par an, Engström Telecom détiendrait près de 45% du marché suédois de la réparation de téléphones portables. La société s'appuie sur un réseau de 540 points de vente. Pour financer cette acquisition ainsi que le rachat (en cours de finalisation) d'un réparateur allemand d'écrans plats et d'équipements informatiques, A Novo vient d'émettre 10 millions d'actions nouvelles pour un montant net de 7,8 millions d'euros.

LONDON — 2001 Electronic Components has extended its European activities into Finland with its parent company, Torst Holdings, acquiring a majority stake in Fintronic Oy based in Helsinki.
Fintronic was founded in 1974 and is a design led sales operation with a strong line up of suppliers headed by Linear Technology. Most of the sales team are degree qualified electronics engineers.
"The new structure of Fintronic under the Torst umbrella has allowed us to increase our investment with our suppliers and partners utilising upgraded systems, broader products profile and additional staff," said Janne Vasama, managing director of Fintronic. "We are also expanding our operations in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia which is already yielding some very promising opportunities and our Russian sales activity is, unsurprisingly, developing some extremely significant market opportunities."

SANTA ANA, Calif. & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 5, 2006--Filtronic plc ("Filtronic") (LSE:FTC), a leading global designer and manufacturer of customized microwave electronic subsystems for the wireless telecommunications and defense industries, and Powerwave Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:PWAV), a global supplier of end-to-end wireless solutions for wireless networks, today announced that the companies have entered into a period of exclusive negotiations for the disposal of Filtronic's filter-based transmit receive module and power amplifier businesses of its Wireless Infrastructure Division. For the avoidance of doubt, there can be no certainty that these negotiations will result in any transaction being completed. We will have no further comment until an agreement is reached or the discussions are terminated.
LONDON — After posting annual gains of 18.7 percent in 2004 and 9.7 percent in 2005, the semiconductor photomask market will grow 4.3 percent in 2006, reaching sales of $3.2 billion, according to The Information Network, a market research company.
“While the semiconductor market is anticipated to grow strongly in 2006, demand for photomasks is directly a function of design activity rather than sales volume from products using photomasks. Therefore, an increase in the semiconductor market does not necessarily translate to an increase in photomask sales,” said Robert Castellano, president of The Information Network (New Tripoli, Pa.).

Analog Devices acquires UK based TTPCom's GSM/GPRS mobile phone modem software business for 23 million US Dollars.
May 03, 2006 13:08 (ElectronicsWeekly)
This deal gives Analog Devices the right to sub-license TTPCom software, allowing Analog Devices to sell a complete software and silicon package. 45 employees based in Cambridge, England will transfer from TTPCom to Analog Devices. The deal leaves around 600 staff at TTPCom.

MANHASSET, N.Y. — ATI Technologies Inc. has acquired Bitboys Oy, a privately held Finland-based graphics company, for $44 million.
Bitboys will be integrated into the Handheld Business Unit of ATI (Markham, Ontario), and form the nucleus for a key design centre for ATI in Europe.
The acquisition enhances ATI's product portfolio with a number of technologies, including OpenGL ES 2.0 3D graphics and OpenVG 1.0 2D vector graphics technologies optimized for high-volume mainstream mobile phones. These graphics cores will be supported by ATI's common software stack which covers its complete range of multimedia co-processors.
This unified software environment allows developers to easily create content for a range of devices and offers mobile phone manufacturers faster time to market.
"Bitboys dovetails into ATI perfectly," said Paul Dal Santo, GM of ATI's Handheld Business Unit, in a statement. "Handsets are transitioning to hardware acceleration for graphics and multimedia, and the Bitboys team will play a critical role as we drive this key inflection point to make ATI the platform of choice for content providers."