Short Takes - Financial Watch:

Five Asian Chipmakers In Collusion Probe

As reported by Alex Frew McMillan; Asian memory-chip companies made it clear that a U.S. antitrust investigation is broader than first realized.

Taiwan's largest memory foundries Winbond Electronics and Nanya Technologies confirmed they had received subpoenas from U.S. authorities. Japan-based Elpida Memory also said its U.S. sales division had received a subpoena in the probe. Elpida is a joint venture of NEC and Hitachi and is the largest maker of DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, chips in Japan. There are at least seven now in probe which brings the total number of Asian chipmakers under investigation to at least five.

It's unclear what U.S. authorities are investigating, after Japanese companies alleged Korean competitors dumped chips. South Korea-based Samsung electronics, a world memory chip leader, and Hynix Semiconductor, the world No. 3, had already been identified as part of the probe.

Elpida ranks fifth in the world behind Samsung, U.S.-based Micron Technology, Hynix and Germany's Infineon. All four of those companies are part of the probe. Hynix Semiconductor confirmed to CNN that its U.S. unit had received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice on possible collusion on chip pricing. But the troubled chipmaker stated that its Korean operations are not involved or implicated. The Seoul-based company said its U.S. division denies violating antitrust laws. A spokesman in Korea said the company is cooperating with U.S. authorities and the investigation.

Nanya cooperating with investigation

That matched the tone from Nanya Technologies, which said it had been contacted by antitrust officials and a California district court. "We will fully cooperate with the judicial department's investigation," it stated in a release.

The probe revolves around collusion on pricing. But it is as yet unclear what type of antitrust action the Justice Department is investigating. Chip prices rose rapidly at the start of 2002, after the worst year in the industry's history. That led to speculation that the jump was rigged, with computer executives such as Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell suggesting a cartel may have been at work.

But Japan's chipmakers had been mulling an antidumping charge against their Korean competitors, alleging companies such as Samsung and Hynix were deliberately offloading cheap chips to undermine competitors. The suit did not go ahead.

Stocks resist selling pressure

Japanese chip companies such as Toshiba have been selling out of DRAM production. Toshiba is now in talks with Fujitsu on a possible combination of their chip operations. NEC is spinning off its chip business altogether, and Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electronics are planning to combine their operations. Stocks in Asia rebounded with Japan's tech-driven Nikkei index rising 1.31 percent to 10,612.98 at the close. In Taipei, Nanya closed down 2.61 percent at T$33.60. Winbond finished off 0.97 percent at T$20.50. But the Taiex staged a dramatic rebound to rise 0.86 percent on the day. Samsung Electronics ended down 2.2 percent at 341,000 won. Hynix ended flat at 290 won. The Kospi shook off that downdraft to close 0.06 percent higher.

CNT Acquires Leading Independent Storage Solutions Provider

The acquisition further strengthens CNT's Storage Solutions organisation, which provides companies with end-to-end storage solutions that deliver on requirements for data availability and management, business continuance and disaster recovery.

The transaction is a stock purchase agreement for $12 million in cash, plus the assumption of approximately $3.6 million of liabilities and includes the acquisition of approximately $8.7 million of tangible assets. The agreement also includes an incentive payout, estimated to be approximately $15 million, based upon earnings over the next two years and has been approved by both companies' boards of directors.

With the acquisition, CNT gains BI-Tech's family of integrated storage solutions including consulting, implementation, managed services, hardware and software. CNT also acquires BI-Tech's employees, with operations in the United Kingdom and Sweden.

"BI-Tech has an impressive customer base, an excellent reputation and unique expertise in the storage solutions industry. This acquisition should be accretive immediately. It augments CNT's strong Storage Solutions offering, complements our acquisition of Articulent in April 2001 and provides us with a European presence in the storage solutions marketplace," said Tom Hudson, chairman, president and chief executive officer of CNT. "Over the last year, our solutions organisation has grown substantially and we see this as a tremendous growth opportunity for the future. The acquisition of BI-tech enhances our portfolio of comprehensive storage solutions and gives us access to a broader base of customers and potential revenue. The end result is that CNT is a stronger enterprise storage networking company."

About BI-Tech

BI-Tech Solutions -- Europe's leading vendor independent storage solutions company, is focused on the design, deployment and management of Enterprise Storage Networks and Enterprise Business Recovery Solutions for business critical distributed and e-business systems. Founded in 1998, the company provides professional services, specialised consulting, implementation, and critical infrastructure solutions to manage and monitor data.

About CNT

CNT is the global storage networking specialist and a pioneer in IP storage solutions. Innovative products and services from CNT help IT professionals design and implement cost-effective storage solutions that span diverse servers, storage systems and networks-enabling enterprise-wide data access and protection. For information, call 763-268-6000 or visit CNT's Web site at www.cnt.com.

DataMentors And Astech Seal Partnership Agreement

ASTECH offers to its clients, providing an accurate 360 degree customer view for effective relationship management. "The media industry is characterized by extraordinarily complex data structures, made up of myriad databases from subscribers to classified and e-commerce," said Ratkovich.

"Adding DMDataFuseTM to our marketing solutions will enable our clients to develop the most accurate, flexible and efficient enterprise-wide databases to optimize their entire marketing campaigns."

"We are delighted at the opportunity to work with ASTECH InterMedia," said DataMentors' president Bob Orf, "and to help them provide the most accurate, highly integrated customer information to their clients." He said that ASTECH's experience and skills within the media industry, and the value- added client relationship solutions and services they provide are well known. "Bundling our two companies' services will accelerate the results and return on investment for their media clients," said Orf.

The combination of DataMentors' library of proprietary matching techniques along with an extensive information library enables DMDataFuseTM to scrub databases clean of extraneous data, providing unprecedented accuracy in identifying each individual and household. It also allows users to create any level - household, super household, account corporation, or individual - to explore data, define unlimited match rules without programming, and match and link data across any field.

About DataMentors, Inc.

DataMentors is a full-service data quality solutions company, providing a comprehensive suite of completely customizable data validation, transformation and database building products. The company offers a fully modular relationship matching and linking system that cleanses, organizes, standardizes and households data, offering superior efficiency and unprecedented accuracy. DataMentors also provides data profiling for non-name and address analysis. Clients choose on-site installation, service bureau processing, or have the opportunity for in- house migration for any solution. Rapid implementation increases customer profitability and ROI while decreasing marketing costs.

For more information, call 813-960-7800 or explore the possibilities at www.datamentors.com.

About ASTECH InterMedia

ASTECH InterMedia is an international strategic marketing company whose primary focus is on processes that improve the profitability of its clients' relationships with their customers. Its innovative marketing solutions include a variety of consulting and education services, application-specific software and data products.

For more information, please call 303-296-9966 x13 or visit www.astech-intermedia.com.