CMS’s Tallgrass Acquisition Plan Falls Through

CMS Enhancements Inc. of Tustin said Friday its planned acquisition of Tallgrass Technologies Corp. has fallen through because a final sale price could not be agreed upon with the Overland Park, Kan., manufacturer of tape backup systems for personal computers.

A CMS deadline for settling terms with Tallgrass’ two major stockholders and a major debt holder passed earlier this month, said Fred Judd, chief financial officer of CMS.

When CMS--a rapidly growing manufacturer of disk storage systems, printers, add-on circuit boards and other computer products--announced plans to acquire Tallgrass in July, it hailed the proposed purchase as a way for CMS to enter the tape backup market without developing products from scratch.

“The failure of the acquisition will keep us from entering that area as rapidly,” Judd said.

He said that acquisitions will still be considered but that the company’s plans for the tape backup market are “up in the air.”

Officials at Tallgrass, a privately owned company with 170 workers, were unavailable for comment.