Tech business cuts ties with parent

As of January, St. Petersburg is one company richer, but there are certainly a lot of similar faces and a familiar name.

Struggling with recent sales declines and a tough financial picture, Swiss technology company Oerlikon began a restructuring to cut costs. This led four Oerlikon Systems division managers in the St. Petersburg etching office — Abdul Lateef, Jim Pollock, Russell Westerman and Edward Ostan — to negotiate a management buyout of the division in January and re-adopt the Plasma-Therm name. Plasma Therm Inc., was the name of the formerly publically traded St. Petersburg manufacturer, which Oerlikon-Buhrle Holding AG acquired in late 1999.

The company, which generates average annual revenue of $35 million to $40 million, designs, manufactures and sells machines that etch thin layers of film to create nano- or micro-sized devices for use in technologies such as hard drives, light-emitting diodes or wireless equipment.