[ltp] US Government May Not Approve Sale of IBM PC Unit

[wes schreiner]

morpheus wrote:

>>But the stock price of the potential buyer, Lenovo, acutally rose by 
>>about 7% on hearing that there might be obstacles to the deal i.e. the 
>>market is pessimistic about the benefit Lenovo will gain from the sale.  
>>If there is anything the US worries about may be the fame & prestige of 
>>the tag "IBM PC Compatible" being stolen by the Chinese. 
>>
>>    
>>
>The US government doesn't work like the Chinese government. It doesn't
>care at all about "fame & prestige."  The only time the government ever
>stops a merger deal is when there may be monopoly issues, but this is
>extremely rare when Republicans are in control.
>  
>

True, but the reported concern is not monopoly issues, but the fact that 
the sale will result in many Chinese engineers spending a lot of time at 
US IBM facilities learning how to run the IBM PC business.  This is a 
good thing if we want Lenovo to maintain the high quality IBM is known 
for, but the US government sees this as a security risk because all 
those smart Chinese might have a spy or two in their midst.  If this 
deal gets killed it will be on national security grounds, not business 
grounds.  Someone in this thread already mentioned a precedent, where 
the sale of undersea fiber optic cables to a Chinese company was denied, 
not because it was bad business, but because of the control over 
infrastructure that this would have given, essentially, to the Chinese 
government. 

wes