July 31, 2007 | posted by Michael Baxter in IABN |

Imagine the meeting. The man waits out side, on the surface calm, inside he is churning, and as a visible sign of his inner turmoil he scratches his beard.

The boss, James, asks him to come into the board room. “What I don’t understand” he begins “is this.” Your company used to be innovative, clever marketing saw you dominate the UK business for word processors before the PC became ubiquitous. You dominated the UK personal home computer scene, you even bought out Sir Clive Sinclair, and then you turned the British PC market upside down when you launched cut prices PCs.” But what do you do now, all you can really manage of any significance is a set top box, and you are far too reliant on just the one customer. You are fired. ”

Of course, it won’t be quite like that, but it would be kind of droll if it was.

BSkyB, which is headed by Rupert’s son James Murdoch, has offered £125 million for Amstrad and the famous boss of the set top maker, Sir Alan Sugar, has accepted the bid.

Sir Alan, who is a sort of eponymous boss, in the sense that Amstrad stands for Alan Michael Sugar Trading, currently owns 29.7 per cent of the business.

It seems the rational for the deal is fairly straight forward. BSkyB already accounts for 30 per cent of Amstrad sales of set top boxes, and it wants an in house RD facility.

In the six months ended 31 December 2006, Amstrad reported a profit before tax of £10.5m on sales of £40.6m profits were less than the same period a year earlier, when they came in at £12.5 million.

These days, though, for Sir Alan, Amsprop, a property business is where the Sugar wealth really sits.

It seems he saw the writing on the wall a long time ago. He realised that Amstrad could not compete against the big boys in the computing world, and it would appear he correctly foresaw the property boom.

At the time of going to press, full details of the deal had not been announced - and it’s not clear what role Sir Alan will have with Amstrad, moving forward.

Steve Jobs, was once famously sacked from Apple, the company he founded. While it is quite pleasant to fantasise about Sir Alan getting the kind of treatment he has dished out to apprentices on his TV show, it seems likely that the reality will be quite different.
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