by CIO Staff

IBM/Lenovo Deal Approved

News
Mar 09, 20051 min
Outsourcing

The IBM/Lenovo deal was approved today. The linked post provides some background, but the one sentence version is that three House Chairmen asked the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to review whether the sale of IBM’s PC division to Lenovo, a Chinese company, would be detrimental to national security. CFIUS’s answer—no—isn’t really a surprise; most people expected the sale to be approved. I talked to Rep. Manzullo’s press secretary a few minutes ago (Manzullo was one of the three Chairmen who requested the extended review), and he said that his boss hasn’t been briefed on the review yet. IBM exec Steven Ward seems like he has, though. Ward, who will be the CEO of the new company, stressed that IBM and Lenovo went to great lengths to satisfy every concern CFIUS had, and expects the deal to be finalized by the end of Q2.

Since the last IBM/Lenovo thread sparked a conversation about outsourcing R&D I thought I would post here as well the news that Lucent is closing two R&D facilities in the states and moving the jobs to India.