Dictaphone intends to pursue a spinout deal from speech recognition firm Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products of Belgium. Dictaphone said today that it has agreed to acquire a key radiology speech recognition product from the financially troubled L&H, and will achieve corporate independence later this year.
Lernout & Hauspie bought Dictaphone in 1999, but stumbled the next year after an accounting scandal hit its South Korean subsidiary. The company filed for Chapter 11 reorganization in December 2000, and industry analysts have expected a spinoff of Dictaphone as part of the restructuring.
Dictaphone is laying the groundwork for the spinoff by acquiring L&H's PowerScribe for Radiology speech recognition product line. The agreement also calls for L&H to transfer to Dictaphone certain L&H employees directly involved in the development and support of PowerScribe-based speech technology. Dictaphone will also gain employees working on its work-in-progress Clinical Language Understanding products.
Dictaphone said it expects to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and achieve independence from L&H by the end of this year.
By AuntMinnie.com staff writersOctober 17, 2001
Related Reading
L&H names new president for Dictaphone, June 1, 2001
Belgian L&H branches out to transcription technology, February 5, 2001
L&H files for bankruptcy, December 1, 2000
L&H highlights success of integration program, November 22, 2000
Copyright © 2001 AuntMinnie.com
