History (1999): ATG Acquired by Its Own Distributor

A manufacturer acquired by one of its distributors. Rare indeed.

ATG, the only French manufacturer of computer storage devices, and the world’s only producer of 12-inch WORM disk drives and media with Plasmon – which recently acquired Philips LMS – is in receivership for the umpteenth time.

The commerce tribunal of Toulouse had to decide the company’s fate, choosing between one of the acquisition offers made by:
– Alain Bouttier, ATG’s current CEO, who had already acquired the company several years ago, and has recently come back as a salaried employee,
– the personnel of the company belonging to SCOP,
– four private investors led by Bruno Epale, head of the FF1.5 million New Medias Diffusion group, for the past 3 years a French distributor of computer media in Europe, particularly for ATG optical disks. Epale indicated that he intends to pursue the enhancement of the 16000 drive, and to take advantage of the company’s expertise and enormous site in Toulouse, France, in order to add a CD-ROM and DVD-ROM production line, in addition to its existing plant in Valbonne, Switzerland.

At press time, we learned that the winner was … New Medias.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 134 on March 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.