History (1990): Digital Design Acquires Jod Electronique, French Storage Distributor

Digital Design (Les Ulis, France) is ending the year with three important outside growths, this brings 1989’s FF200 million sales to FF350 million in 1990, and probably more since the company is waiting to sign an industrial agreement with worldwide significance.

A supplier of products for medical and digital images, and notably a reseller of products from Optimem, Cipher, NEC, Ciprico and Emulex, Digital Design has just acquired JOD Electronique SA, another distributor mainly involved in magnetic and optical peripherals (Seagate, Maxtor, US Design, Tandberg, Identica , etc). This company ought to reach FF100 million sales in 1989.

Digital Design’s second acquisition is Magnum GmbH (Grafelfing, West Germany) that supplies magnetic and disk tape peripherals as well as optical disks. Handled by Wolfgang Schallhorn, former GM of Cipher Data Products GmbH (Puchheim, West Germany) since 1981, Magnum’s sales should reach DM3.5 million this year.

Jean-Marie Lucani is Digital Design’s main shareholder with 63% of the shares and 71% of the voting rights, shared with Charterhouse Associates (11%), the Credit Agricole (8%), AGF (4%), the Worms Bank (2%), employees (2%) and other small private shareholders (10%).

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠25, published on February 1990.