US Unisys sells out: dissolving the joint venture (2006)

An independence with a price on it

When a joint venture is dissolved, the movement of shares looks like the main event; in this decision what moved first was the contract. In October 2005 a lump-sum licence fee of $225 million for the trademark and related rights, together with an annual technical-support fee of $20 million, was fixed, and the shares were sold half a year later. It reads as a price tag being attached, immediately before independence, to the value of trademark and technology that had until then been settled behind the parent’s equity stake. It was a tidying-up in order to withdraw the capital, and at the same time a preparation for going on selling American products once the capital had gone.

The substance of the independence was correspondingly limited. The annual securities report for the year ended March 2007 still listed Unisys Corporation among its important suppliers and recorded that $110.4M (¥13bn) of foreign-currency purchases were exposed to exchange rates. Mitsui & Co., holding 27.84%, remained, and the president was a man out of that company. From the cutting of the capital thread to the disappearance of “UNISYS” from the corporate name would take a further sixteen years.