Miranda Acquisition of NVISION Falters; Private Investors Purchase Company

Montreal-based Miranda Technologies has called off its acquisition of NVISION. ADC, which owns NVISION, instead sold the company to a group of private investors on May 24. The newly named NVISION Inc. will continue to operate from its existing Grass Valley facility, with the current management team and workforce remaining in place, according to NVISION officials.

It was at NAB2002 that Miranda announced it had entered into a purchase agreement with ADC Telecommunications to purchase NVISION. The move was designed to bolster Miranda's routing, signal processing and fiber-optic product lines, and would have led to the creation of Miranda MGV Inc., a new entity that would have regrouped NVISION personnel, facilities and products in a Grass Valley facility.

However, ADC and Miranda were unable to finalize the financing details within set deadlines, leading ADC to sell NVISION, a manufacturer of routing and distribution equipment, to anonymous investors for an undisclosed sum.

At issue was getting the financing to close, according to newly appointed Miranda CEO Strath Goodship. "This was a financing issue, not a strategic one."

ADC acquired NVISION two and a half years ago, but decided to divest itself of the business group in an effort to "focus our business on what we feel our strategic growth areas are," said ADC Spokesman Chuck Grothaus. "We continue to support the broadcast industry with what we feel are the key audio/video products."

Although the news is "disappointing … because it was a perfect match," said Miranda's Goodship, "we're not threatened [by the acquisition falling through] in any way. We have new issues to tackle."

NVISION Inc. plans to focus more aggressively on the audio/video routing market, and is scheduled to roll out a new as-yet-unnamed router product in the fall, said Jay Kuca, NVISION director of marketing. "We won't de-emphasize our terminal equipment line, but we do see an opportunity to make routing our core businesses."