History (1993): Acquisition of Cygnet by ATG Confirmed

According to its GM, Christian Maillard, ATG Gigadisc ratified the acquisition of the Californian company Cygnet, coming out of Chapter XI, on September 30, for an amount of $7 million, with 4 million in cash, then 3 million in the next two years.

The two firms are merging into one single company, ATG-Cygnet.

The French manufacturer of digital optical units and media now has a 100% control on the worldwide manufacturer of 12-inch jukeboxes.

ATG’s shareholders are the same as those of NIC and its subsidiary Dorotech: Bruno-Costa Marini, Manuel Munz, Altus France and two US executives.

Cygnet also has in store an automatic multimedia library that can indifferently access 1000×5.25-inch optical disks, magnetic cartridges or CD-ROMs.

ATG-Cygnet has agreed to not question the jukebox sales strategy to computer manufacturers and integrators using other drives than those manufactured by ATG .

Cygnet was selling its products to DEC, IBM, ICI, Siemens, Wang and system integrators, and supports drives from ATG, Hitachi, Philips and Sony.

According to the French firm, ATG-Cygnet reports a FF175 million for annual sales with a staff of 195 employees. Manuel Munz is the chairman of the new company.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue 69, published on October 1993.