What goes around ...
1 min read
Back in 2006, Emerson acquired Artesyn Technologies, acknowledged at the time as a leader in the design, manufacture and sale of power conversion and embedded board solutions. The deal valued Artesyn at around $500million.
The next year, Emerson bought Motorola's Embedded Communications Computing (ECC) business for $350m in cash in a move to strengthen its position in what it saw at the time as market worth $6billion and with the potential for strong growth. Much earlier, in 1999, Emerson bought Astec Power.
These organisations were rolled into Emerson's Network Power business, but things didn't quite pan out as expected. Citing weakness in the technology equipment market and adding the business was 'no longer a strategic fit', Emerson sold a 51% stake in its embedded computing and power business to a private equity company for $300m in August 2013.
Now, that business has a new name – Artesyn Embedded Technologies.
It's not the first time that huge corporations have made relatively expensive acquisitions, then divested them because they 'don't fit'. It won't be the last, either. These organisations don't seem to see the irony in acquiring companies, then using the excuse when 'spitting them out' that they will be better off as standalones.
