The laser diode specialists

News Release from: Bookham
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 18 December 2001

Bookham bids for Marconi's optical business

Bookham Technology has entered into an agreement to acquire the business of Marconi Optical Components.

Note: Readers of the Editor’s free email newsletter will have read this news when it was announced. . It’s free!

Bookham Technology has entered into an agreement to acquire the business of Marconi Optical Components (MOC) in exchange for 12,891,000 ordinary shares in Bookham, equivalent to approximately 9.999% of the current issued share capital of Bookham. Based on the mid-market closing share price of Bookham on 14th December 2001 the acquisition has a value of approximately GBP 19.7 million. The acquisition is conditional on the approval of Bookham shareholders.

MOC designs, manufactures and supplies current and next generation active optical components.

Based in Caswell, Northamptonshire (UK), MOC's products include fixed and tunable lasers, high-speed gallium arsenide modulators, transmitters, receivers and erbium-doped fibre amplifiers.

By integrating MOC's active components with its own solutions, Bookham expects to accelerate its development of more highly integrated optical components combining both active and passive optical functions, providing greater subsystems capability to its customers and resulting in margin and efficiency improvements.

As part of the acquisition Marconi has agreed to purchase a minimum of GBP 30 million of components from Bookham to meet the needs of its core business operations over the next 18 months (subject to certain performance and capacity terms).

Commenting on the Acquisition, Giorgio Anania, President and CEO of Bookham, said: "We believe that the acquisition is an important step for Bookham towards our goal of becoming the leading global provider of integrated optical circuits and subsystems to the optical network systems manufacturers.

We anticipate our customers in the future will require more highly integrated subsystems incorporating both active and passive optical functionality.

Combining Bookham's integrated silicon optical chip with MOC's active optical components, we believe, will allow us to provide these fuller solutions.

The acquisition provides Bookham with both immediate revenues from the Marconi supply agreement and longer term growth potential from the development of next generation capabilities".

• Bookham: contact details and other news
• Other news in Optoelectronics
• Email this news to a colleague
•
• RSS news feed for Bookham
• RSS news feed for Optoelectronics
• Electronicstalk Home Page