A couple of local computer industry veterans,Lap Shun “John” Hui and Wayne Inouye,may come out of retirement to take on Europe.
Hui, who sold eMachines Inc. to Irvine-based Gateway Inc. in 2003, is said to be interested in buying Packard Bell’s European unit, which is part of Tokyo-based NEC Corp., according to a recent report in Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a Japanese daily.
NEC has been in negotiations with Hui and could sell as early as August, the report said. The sale could be as much as $87 million.
There’s also speculation that Inouye, the former chief executive at Gateway and colleague of Hui, might be the choice for chief executive at Packard Bell, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group in San Jose.
Inouye was chief executive at eMachines under Hui’s ownership for nearly two years. A potential roadblock to the chief executive talk: Inouye may not be able to take a job in the computer industry because of a non-compete contract from his stint at Gateway.
Hui didn’t comment on the possible sale. He did post on his Web site a Wall Street Journal article discussing the Packard Bell speculation. Inouye couldn’t be reached for comment.
Hui made a name for himself in the U.S. computer industry in 2002, when he invested about $160 million in then-struggling eMachines and took the company private. Inouye had been chief executive since 2001.
After the 2002 acquisition, Inouye said he talked with Hui nearly every day about eMachines’ progress.
Hui is the cofounder of South Korea’s Korea Data Systems, one of two companies that together started eMachines in 1998.
For more on this story, see the July 31 issue of the Business Journal.
