WEST CHESTER, Pa. (AP) _ Commodore International Ltd., a pioneer in the
personal computer industry, said late Friday it is going out of business.

The company plans to transfer its assets to unidentified trustees ``for the
benefit of its creditors'' and has placed its major subsidiary,
Commodore Electronics Ltd., into voluntary liquidation.

``This is the initial phase of an orderly voluntary liquidation of both
companies,'' Commodore said in a brief statement.  Company executives could
not immediately be reached Friday evening.

The company last month reported an $8.2 million loss for the quarter ending
Dec. 31 on sales of $70.1 million. A year earlier, Commodore lost
$77.2 million on sales of $237.7 million in the same period.

In the latest report, Commodore said financial limits had thwarted its ability
to supply products, leading to weakened sales.  One of its new products, the
Amiga CD32 video game, had sold poorly in Europe, where the company did most
of its business.  The company's net worth turned negative in the fiscal year
ended last June 30.

Its stock, which had traded at around $3 per share before the quarterly
results were announced last month, closed unchanged at 87 cents per share on
the New York Stock Exchange Friday.

Commodore started 40 years ago as a typewriter repair company in the Bronx.
Its extension to the adding machine business paved the way for it to make
calculators and then personal computers by the mid-1970s.

Commodore competed with Radio Shack for the first computers sold to homes and
co-founder Jack Tramiel became a highly-regarded figure in the fledgling PC
industry. By the early 1980s, it was overshadowed in the PC business by
Apple Computer Inc. and International Business Machines Corp.  Software
manufacturers didn't create as much software for Commodore's Amiga line as it
did for Apple and IBM-compatible machines.

In recent years, most of Commodore's business was in Europe.

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   Guys, this refers to Commodore International, Ltd.  In other words,
Commodore UK, Commodore Asia/Pacific, Commodore Canada, Commodore Germany,
etc...  are ALL going out of business.  When the parent company folds,
the subsidiries have no choice but to go under.  The parent company is
in charge of manufacturing of current systems and development of future
systems, and without the parent company, the subsidiaries have NOTHING to
sell.

+++++++
 ++++      Marc Barrett  -MB-
   ++      IRC nick: Cyclone  |  e-mail: barr...@iastate.edu
   +