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Wipro Acer plans public issue in 1-2 years

The offering is expected to be around 25 per cent of the equity base though a final decision is likely to be taken only at the time of the issue and will lead to the dilution of the stake of the two promoters in the company.

This is in line with the agreement between the companies, according to York Chen, managing director, Acer International. He, however, refused to

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comment on the exact timing of the issue.

Chen added that Acer follows a policy of maintaining minority stake in the numerous joint ventures it has all over the world. "We have always maintained that the majority stake should be held by the local joint venture partner in each country since we believe that the local partner has better knowledge of the local market conditions."

Moreover, Acer will also not set up a subsidiary in the country since this may jeopardise the relations with its venture partner Wipro Corporation.

He pointed out that this will prevent the joint venture from the fate suffered by that between Hewlett Packard and HCL Corporation.

The Indian operations come under Acer Computer, Singapore's Asia Pacific regional business unit which generates business worth $1 billion for the Acer group.

Wipro Acer has launched its new range of servers and personal and notebook computers based on Intel's latest Pentium II microprocessor.

This follows the company's decision to completely phase out the Pentium Pro-based machines by the faster Pentium II chips.

The integrated server solutions have features for better server configuration, pro-monitoring of various components and sub-systems and protection from virus attacks, Suresh Vaswani, chief executive of Wipro Acer said here.

The desktop personal computer, Wipro Acerentra 3000, has features for faster memory access, double disk transfer rate and low ownership cost in a network environment.

The multimedia personal computer, Wipro Acerentra 4000, with multimedia extension (MMX) technology has sound blaster, a compatible 3D audio system and optional high-speed 33.6 kilobits per second fax/modem for quick Internet access.

Wipro Acer Travelmate 7100, the notebook using Intel's latest Pentium processor with MMX technology, has a longer battery life and sports a 3.2 gigabyte hard disk and 128 bit graphics accelerator, Vaswani added.

From April 1998, full fledged assembling activities would be undertaken at the Wipro Acer's own premise in Pondicherry which will have a capacity of making 60,000 to 70,000 machines per annum.

- Compiled from the Indian media

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