Amiga Magazin Interviews Petro Tyschtschenko

In a copyrighted interview posted on the AMIGA-Magazin (a German Amiga print magazine) web site, Amiga Technologies president, Petro Tyschtschenko said that it's pretty much, "business as usual," for Amiga Technologies now that Chicago-based VIScorp has made its intentions official that it wants to aquire Amiga Technologies from German parent company, Escom AG. He said that VIScorp has a set amount of time to make its assesment of the purchase and to close the deal. Tyschtschenko indicated that he was optimistic that this would happen as planned.

According to the article, Tyschtschenko noted that the selling price of $40 million (USD) consists of the intellectual property, existing inventories of finished products and components as well as existing distribution channels worldwide.

Asked whether he thought VIScorp would develop new Amigas, he said that he was certain of it, but that the detailed plans of the new partnership would be revealed at a press conference to be held later. (Originally scheduled for Frankfurt in mid- to late May, the press conference was subsequently canceled and will be announced later. Another more informal meeting between VIScorp and Amiga users and developers has been set for May 19, 1996 in Toulouse, France.) He also interjected that the infamous Amiga Walker would NOT be produced in the oddly futuristic casing seen at the recent CeBIT96 trade show and that it would have a "traditional" Amiga A????-style name. He then thanked Amiga Magazin for sponsoring an effort to come up with a new name.

On the issue of further development, Tyschtschenko confirmed that ex-Commodorians Andy Finkel and Dave Haynie had been hired on as "external advisors" and that talks are continuing with US-based Motorola.

As an interesting aside, and perhaps one final dig at Commodore, Tyschtschenko said, "The purchase will sure be staged trouble-free, because we fortunately don't have the problems as with the purchase of Commodore. After all, AMIGA Technologies is a decent run, German company."

The interview was led by René Beaupoil on the 15th of April 1996.

-Kevin Hisel
Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

Translation services by Rainer Koschnick r.koschnick@r-m-b.gun.de.
Thanks to Darren Eveland darren@mgl.ca for submitting the English text of the interview.

Copyright, 1996, CUCUG

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