BenQ no longer part of Acer, finalises billion dollar deal

Acer has announced it has resigned its position on BenQ’s board of directors.

Acer founder Stan Shih, a current BenQ director, will now remain as a director only in an individual capacity.

In a statement, BenQ said Acer was in the process of disposing of its investment holdings in order to focus on growing its own business.

Philip Newton, BenQ vice president Asia-Pacific, said “BenQ was first spun off from Acer at the end of 2001. With the acquisition of Siemens mobile phone business and rapidly expanding CE business combined with our traditional IT products BenQ can now become and un-encumbered global 3C company. This is simply the last necessary step to be taken."

While BenQ and Acer had operated as two distinct brands in recent years Acer's pulling out will see BenQ become wholly independent of the company at the board level.

Eric Ky Yu, BenQ’s senior vice president of finance said although Acer has been a long-standing partner to BenQ, the company believed the separation was a natural evolution.

BenQ - headquartered in Taiwan - has reported its March revenue reached NT$12.4 billion, up 25 per cent year-on-year.

Acer could not be reached for comment.

In related news, BenQ has announced that Chinese manufacturing company, Lite-On IT, will acquire its storage-related assets including BenQ's ODM customer portfolio, rights to use BenQ's technology, and secure order commitments on BenQ-branded storage products.

BenQ will receive around NT$1.2 billion in cash and acquire a 13 per cent stake in Lite-On IT through the deal. Both companies expect to close the transaction around early June 2006.