Mergers, Acquisitions Are Big in Connectors
By Ken Fleck -- EDN, February 12, 2001
Acquisitions, mergers and technical alliances had tremendous impact over the connector industry during the past year. Let's look at some of the key deals affecting North American manufacturers. Conglomerate Tyco International was exceptionally active on the acquisition front during 2000 by closing more than 20 deals. While not all of these involved Tyco Electronics and the traditional connector industry, many did involve connectors.
Tyco, which tops the connector industry sales chart, agreed to acquire the electronic equipment manufacturing operations of Thomas & Betts for $750 million; paid an undisclosed amount for Osram Sylvania's Electronic Components 0.64mm GET terminal system connector business for automotive applications; added Uni-Star Industries' Microdot Connector operations for $12.3 million; and reached an agreement to acquire Laser Diode for Tyco's Fiber Optic division, adding active and passive products for the dense wave digital multiplexing market. These deals were added to the prior periods' acquisitions of Siemens EC (electromechanical components), Elcon, Raychem and AMP.
As a result, revenues in the year 2000 for Tyco Electronics reached $10 billion. Technology agreements included global license for optical flex circuits using proprietary Advanced Interconnection technology to complement Lightray MPX optical backplanes; a patent license agreement with British Telecommunications to implement BT's technology in fiber optic products; and a cooperative development agreement with ERNI for 3.125Gbit/sec. high-speed connectors.
In other connector industry acquisition moves during 2000, Molex Inc. agreed to acquire Axsys Technologies' Beau Interconnect division for $31.8 million; Corning signed a definitive agreement to acquire Siemens AG's worldwide optical cable and hardware business and the remaining 50 percent of its two coinvestments with Siemens-Siecor and Siecor GmbH-for $1.4 billion; Amphenol acquired MicroLink Electronics cable assembly operations in Estonia; Insilco Technologies acquired Precision Cable Manufacturing (PCM); Thomas & Betts sold its fiber optic product line to Alcoa.
Also last year, Smith Industries of England paid $25.8 million to acquire Florida RF Labs, adding cable assemblies; and the Volex Group acquired 100 percent of Mitema, a Swedish company, and 40 percent of its subsidiary in Brazil, Volex do Brasil.
Additionally, Teradyne announced agreements to acquire two California-based companies, both in the PCB industry: Herco Technology, a fabricator of PCBs, and Synthane Taylor, which supplies PCB laminates. RF Industries completed the acquisition of Bioconnect, a maker of interconnect products to the health care industry; Sanmina acquired Hadco, a maker of PCBs and backplanes, for $1.3 billion and signed a $115 million deal to acquire Essex AB, a Swedish contract manufacturer.
C-MAC Industries agreed to buy Invotronics Manufacturing and also purchased two Quebec companies, GHZ Technologies and TQF Technologies; Bell Microproducts completed the acquisition of United Kingdom-based Ideal Hardware and also agreed to acquire Europe-based Rorke Data Storage & Systems business; SMTC Corp. purchased Qualtron Teoranta, a cable and harness interconnect maker in Donegal, Ireland.
 
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