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To: Hippieslayer who wrote (6780)	12/11/1997 9:52:00 PM
From: Sowbug	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 213173

Ouch. MacWarehouse appears to be getting out of the business. Too bad -- I liked them. Micro Warehouse to close some facilities NORWALK, Conn., Dec 11 (Reuters) - Micro Warehouse Inc, a direct marketer of personal computers, said on Thursday that it would close or sell several of its business, post a fourth quarter charge and revamp its upper management. The company said it is closing its businesses in Australia and Japan and disposing of its operations in Norway, Denmark and Finland. Also, it is closing its European headquarters in the United Kingdom and transfering some of its functions to other European operations. Micro Warehouse said it will consolidate its USA Flex business from its facility in Bloomingdale, Illinois to existing facilities in New Jersey and write off all of the goodwill associated with this business. For the company's fourth quarter, it will post a pre-tax charge of $68 million, cmprised of goodwill write offs of $40 million and $28 million of other costs. The cash portion of the charge is about $15 million, the company said. The operations being sold or disposed of accounted for $61 million in revenues and operating losses of $4.0 million in 1997. Micro Warehouse reported $1.55 billion in sales for the first nine months and net income of $8.5 million, including a litigation charge. Micro Warehouse said former chief executive officer and president Linwood Lacy Jr. resigned from the board. Kris Rogers, executive vice president and U.S. general manager, and Bruce Martin, senior vice president, international, plan to resign as a result of the restructuring, the company said. Bruce Lev, executive vice president of legal and corporate affairs, said the businesses in Norway, Denmark and Finland could not justify the scale of the infrastructure. The businesses in Japan and Australia were too far away and too small to manage effectively and profitably, Lev said. The businesses being closed or disposed of are dependent on the Apple Computer Inc (Nasdaq:AAPL - news) Macintosh platform. ''This is a way of avoiding dilution of energies so we could focus on Wintel platform,'' Lev said. He noted the Macintosh business is still important, especially in the United States, and the company still regards itself as the premier reseller of Macintosh computers. The ''Wintel'' computer platform is a nickname for personal computers that run Microsoft Corp [Nasdaq:MSFT - news]'s Windows operating system and Intel computer chips. Lev was unable to give a specific number of jobs to be cut by the company's restructuring.