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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J Fieb who wrote (1150)	4/6/1999 10:43:00 PM
From: J Fieb	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4808

Other report on TEK's troubled Grass Valley unit.. look who the interested parties are........ tvbroadcast.com Following the report by The Wall Street Journal earlier this week (March 29) that a majority shareholder in Tektronix was pushing for "decisive action" with regard to the video and network division (VND), rumors have run rampant around the broadcast and teleproduction industries about the fate of the Tektronix Grass Valley Products division. Relational Investors of La Jolla, Calif., a $750 million investment fund co-owned by the California Public Employees Retirement Systems, has taken a 9.9 percent stake (4.59 million shares) in Tektronix. Fund managing director and shareholder activist Ralph Whitworth stated that he might seek a proxy fight to add new board member to Tek's board. Under Oregon law a shareholder with 10 percent of stock outstanding can call a special shareholder meeting. Relational Investors would have to purchase approximately 460,000 additional shares to up their stake to 10 percent. While rumors have circulated that the old Grass Valley Group had already been sold, that is not the case. As a publicly held company, Tektronix would have to file papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 24 hours of such a sale. No papers have been filed. It is well known that Jerome Myers, Tektronix chief executive office and the board of directors has been displeased with the performance of VND since 1996. Mr. Myers has said publicly that "we're losing patience" with VND. According to Tektronix spokesperson Heather Wyse, the company plans to make a decision regarding VND in the next 30 days. Possible scenarios include (but are not limited to): Selling VND, which includes Grass Valley Products Spinning off VND into a separate company An employee buy-out of the division Maintaining VND as it currently is Ms. Wyse says that Tektronix has no plans to shut down Grass Valley Products, but that Tek's board is actively pursuing various options. This comes at a time when Grass Valley Products is scheduled to celebrate their 40th anniversary at NAB, with a cake cutting ceremony on Monday April 19 at 5:00pm at their booth in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Industry experts agree that the two most likely scenarios are either VND being sold or spun-off. Potential buyers that have been mentioned are Accom, Panasonic Broadcast & Digital Systems Company, Philips Digital Video Systems and Pinnacle Systems. Experts agree that Pinnacle Systems appears to be the best match as their current product offerings are the least competing systems to other companies, in direct competition with Avid. Last fall, Tek signed an alliance with Avid and discontinued the Lightworks line as part of a corporate restructuring of VND. The suit charges that that decision, and misleading information fed to the small company up until the announcement, destroyed Digital Images' business. The suit accuses Tek executives, including former VND president Lucie Fjeldstad of misrepresenting Lightworks' future and strategic importance to Tek and failing to deliver system upgrades. According to reports, Digital Images continued to focus on the Lightworks system and to steer customers away from Avid. Digital Images is seeking a jury trial and punitive and other damages under the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts. Wyse says that the suit is without merit. NAB '99 Exclusive Avid Unity: A New Media Network for Postproduction videography.com Unity is based on a server-assisted architecture supporting a full file-level-locked storage subsystem where multiple users can access media files simultaneously and transparently. Workstations can access this tower of storage without any need for local storage. In my opinion, Unity is an NAB '99 must-see. Could someone in the biz read this article and answer a Q) Is this FC based SAN, or just a server and some storage? Thanks in advance..