February 3, 1998 (SAN FRANCISCO) -- Hitachi Ltd. is reorganizing its subsidiary and North America regional headquarters, Hitachi America Ltd., with an aim to streamline its electronic devices business as of April 1.

The electronic devices sales and marketing divisions of Hitachi America will be transferred to Hitachi Electronic Devices (USA) Inc., a subsidiary of Tarrytown, N.Y.-based Hitachi America. Those divisions make and sell CRTs. Most of the manufacturing of those products is in Greenville, SC.

The new group, to retain the name of Hitachi Electronic Devices (USA), will have its headquarters in Norcross, GA, outside of Atlanta, according to Hitachi America. It will be capitalized at US$140 million.

"With a unified North America organization, integrated from manufacturing through sales and support, Hitachi can better serve our customers more speedily and flexibly," said Kenichi Fukuzawa, president of Hitachi Electronic Devices.

Hitachi Electronic Devices will comprise three divisions: manufacturing, sales of electron tubes and sales of flat panel displays.

NEC Corp. and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. are other Tokyo-based computer and electronics companies that have recently restructured their U.S. subsidiaries.

Also, Hitachi's parent company in Tokyo announced that it will restructure its Information Systems Group and Consumer Products & Information Media Systems Group into three new groups. The new groups will be the Information Systems Group, the Information Media Systems Group and the Consumer Products Group. The change will occur on Feb. 21.

Hitachi said it aims to strengthen its multimedia business as well as its information systems business in the corporate market.

The new Information Systems Group will cater to information systems for the corporate market. Its focus will include systems integration of enterprise systems and service provider businesses such as the multimedia content business and services for electronic-commerce transactions. It also will focus on development and marketing of high-end servers and computer peripheral equipment.

(Neil Davis, Asia BizTech Correspondent)