When a company loses it's value in the market place, in many cases because they failed keep up with technology, they are sold to a corporate bone picker. These bone pickers buy a company, and then pick off parts of the business with potential and sell them to a competitor, or a business that can take advantage of the component parts. The parts of a declining company can be more valuable than the whole.
It has been reported that Platinum Equity, who appear to be a corporate bone picker, maybe buying Grass Valley. This is not good for our local economy. The best parts will be sold off until there is only a hollow shell that collapses. One of the upside could be that local video companies buy some of the GVG parts, now ever it will more likely be offshore companies that have lower cost manufacturing facilities.
One of the companies that Platinum Equity bought was US Robotics that used to have a strong presence in Nevada County. Some of US Robotics key products were developed in their Nevada County design center. It looks like US Robotics failed to keep up with technology by sticking with their analog modems when the market was transition to digital broadband. US Robotics web site indicates declining business and development. Check the declining number of press releases on new products here. Contrast 2006 with 2009.
More on this pending sale as we investigate.
Update #1: To clear up come confusion about Grass Valley or Grass Valley Group or Grass Valley Thomson. I used Grass Valley Group in the headline, because that is how most local's know our best known video electronics company. In the text I used the trade marked name Grass Valley. See this screen shot:
I do not see any mention of Thomson Grass Valley, or Grass Valley group. The trade mark is Grass Valley, the blog logo is Grass Valley and your will find our that in France and Germany the company address is Grass Valley. I am not sure what the point was that several of those commenting were trying to make. According to the best information available it is Grass Valley that is for sale, a company owned by Thomson.
