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    1. Business Management

    GenTek to buy Krone, maybe Prestolite

    Aug. 1, 2003
    Drawn by the promise of exploding sales opportunities in the U.S. voice/data market, GenTek, Inc., has announced plans to acquire Krone AG from Jenoptik

    Drawn by the promise of exploding sales opportunities in the U.S. voice/data market, GenTek, Inc., has announced plans to acquire Krone AG from Jenoptik AG for $218 million in cash and the assumption of Krone debt.

    Krone is a manufacturer of voice/data connectors. GenTek has an interest in the voice/data market through a potential marketing partnership with Prestolite Wire Corp., Southfield, Mich., a low-voltage wiring specialist. Krone and Prestolite have a marketing relationship that predates the acquisition.

    Prestolite Wire and GenTek, Hampton, N.H., share the same chairman and are affiliated with Latona Associates, Hampton, N.H., an investment firm that provides advisory services.

    The marketing partnership would provide a package of datacom connectors and cable for premises-wiring applications. GenTek also has aspirations to grow overseas and has inked a deal with Anixter, Inc., Skokie, Ill., to distribute the company's products in the Asia-Pacific market. Krone had $300 million in revenues in 1998 and employs 3,000 employees in 25 countries.

    About the Author

    Doug Chandler | Senior Staff Writer

    Doug has been reporting and writing on the electrical industry for Electrical Wholesaling and Electrical Marketing since 1992 and still finds the industry’s evolution and the characters who inhabit its companies endlessly fascinating. That was true even before e-commerce, LED lighting and distributed generation began to disrupt so many of the electrical industry’s traditional practices.

    Doug earned a BA in English Literature from the University of Kansas after spending a few years in KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism, then deciding he absolutely did not want to be a journalist. In the company of his wife, two kids, two dogs and two cats, he spends a lot of time in the garden and the kitchen – growing food, cooking, brewing beer – and helping to run the family coffee shop.

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