How would you feel? It's as if Intel, having bought up all the U.S. competition and after several years of ownership by Lockheed-Martin, was put on the block because its parent could buy its technology from China, or somew here, while minimizing it's R&D and manufacturing costs.

"It will never happen," I hear you say. Of course it won't. Not like that anyway.

Well this is Britain, where 100 years ago we were discovering the electron and driving the industrial manufacturing revolution, and, apparently, we don't value the ability to make integrated circuits.

It was almost a foregone conclusion that the British General Electric Company would decide to put its chip-making arm up for sale.

There was just a slight hope the incoming GEC managing director, George Simpson, when he embarked on his review of the group last September, would value the chip maker more highly than did his predecessor, Lord Arnold Weinstock; that he would decide to spend money rather than stockpile it.

But Simpson has chosen not to invest any of the $1.8-billion cash mountain amassed by Weinstock in a company which, at $350-million in annual sales revenue, contributes less than 2 percent to his $18-billion company. Just as his pre decessor did, Simpson will concentrate on the return-on-investment offered by his multibillion-dollar system-level companies.

And yet, even though we British don't invest in chip making, we are, apparently, very good at it. The U.K. has more than its fair share of inward investment in wafer fabs. They are supported by government grants and local tax breaks for which GEC Plessey Semiconductor, as a U.K.-owned company, was not eligible. But most countries in Europe provide such incentives. For whatever detailed reasons, Fujitsu, Motorola, National Semiconductor, NEC, Newport Wafer Fab, Seagate and Siemens, all manufacture chips here and will shortly be joined by Hyundai and LG Semicon.

So the regret is that U.K. bankers, stockbrokers and politicians can't see what their peers in the U.S., Japan and Korea can.

But my regret is tinged with hope.

Whereas Weinstock chose to keep GEC Plessey Semiconductors on so tight a financial leash that the company was being throttled, Simpson has decided t o free the company. It will probably be bought by a U.S. or Korean concern.

The right buyer will be one that doesn't asset-strip--take the customers, the best engineers, the best circuit ideas and let manufacturing wither. It will let GEC Plessey Semiconductors continue to develop its strategy based on excellent RF and mixed-signal circuit design and manufacture.

I am indebted to Jim Eastlake, director of semiconductor research at Dataquest Europe (Egham England), for this suggestion as to one possible buyer for GPS.

Eastlake pointed out that Samsung has arrived in the northeast of England; putting down major equipment factories and with land earmarked for, but not yet committed to, a wafer fab. "Samsung is desperate to branch out into anything but memory," said Eastlake. "GPS does know ASICs, and with the credibility of Samsung, that could be a powerful combination."

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