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In Brief
Published:  01 October, 2006

• SKF has bought Economos, the Austrian manufacturer of seals and engineered plastic components, from Salzer Holding, for more than £45m in cash. Ecnomos employs more than 800 people worldwide and had sales worth almost £50m last year. SKF recently took a controlling interest in a North American seals company, Macrotech Polyseal.

• Schaeffler has acquired the automotive chain-maker Renold Automotive Systems (RAS) from Renold plc. The acquisition will allow Scheffler`s automotive division to offer complex chain drives including tensioners and guides and to become a Tier One supplier. RAS, which makes riolelr and bushed roller chains, employs around 700 people at sites in France, the US and China.

• RBC Bearings, the US manufacturer of engineered precision plain, roller and ball bearings, has acquired California-based All Power Manufacturing, which produces bearings and precision parts for aerospace and industrial applications. RBC paid around $9.3m in cash for All Power whose revenues are worth some $12.2m.

• Motorola is buying Symbol Technologies in a deal which values Symbol at $3.9bn. Symbol specialises in technologies such as mobile computing, data capture, RFID, and wireless infrastructures. Symbol recently settled a long-running dispute with Intermec over intellectual property rights for barcode scanner and wireless patents.

• Florida-based wireless automation specialist Elutions has bought Supervisor Holdings which owns the SCADA supplier Wizcon Holdings, with offices in the UK, France and The Netherlands.

• B&B Electronics has bought the Arizona-based developer of industrial wireless technologies, Advanced Embedded Systems. AES` products allow most PLCs, HMIs and PCs to be equipped for wireless sensor I/Os.

• Atlas Copco is buying the German specialist in tightening technologies, TBB (Technisches Buro Bohm), which employs 30 people and had a turnover of €6m in 2005.

• A subsidiary of TRW Automotive has bought the Slovakian motor manufacturer Dana Emerson Actuator Systems from Dana Corporation for an undisclosed sum. DEAS, which employs 255 people, makes motors that TRW uses in its electrically assisted steering systems for vehicles.

• The German connector manufacturer, Hirschmann Automation and Control, has formed a joint venture with Ningbo Zettler Electronics in China, to produce connectors in large volumes. By mid-2007, the plant, in Yuyao, is expected to be employing 150 people and to be occupying 1,600 square metres. Hirschmann will continue to make customised and special products in Germany and Hungary.

• Nathan Peterson, a 26-year-old Californian and owner of iBackups, has been sentenced to seven years and three months in prison, and fined $5.4m in restitution after pleading guilty to illegally copying and selling pirated software including applications developed by Autodesk and others, worth $7-20m.

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