Prime Computer to Buy Rival

Prime Computer Inc. said today it reached an agreement to acquire its rival, Computervision Corp., for $15 a share or $435 million, a deal that will create the world’s second largest computer-aided design and manufacturing firm.

The merger will put Prime, with annual revenue of $1.5 billion, in the top half of the Fortune 500, and will create a firm second only to International Business Machines Corp. in the computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing market. The agreement ends a month of wrangling between Prime and the Bedford, Mass.-based Computervision, which had rejected Prime’s earlier $13.50 a share bid.