Editing Prime Computer (section)

==Decline and end==
By the late eighties, the company was having problems retaining customers who were moving to lower-cost systems, as minicomputers entered their decline to obsolescence. Prime failed to keep up with customers' increasing need for raw computing power. By the end, not a single Prime computer was subject to [[COCOM]] export controls, as they were insufficiently powerful for the US Government to fear their falling into the hands of hostile powers.

In 1988, financier [[Bennett S. LeBow]] attempted a [[hostile takeover]] of Prime, leveraging his much smaller [[MAI Basic Four]] company.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE0D8133CF937A15752C1A96E948260&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fPeople%2fL%2fLeBow%2c%20Bennett%20S. |title=COMPANY NEWS; MAI Basic Pursues Prime Computer |agency=Associated Press |date=November 24, 1988 |work=New York Times |access-date=April 12, 2011}}</ref> To stave off LeBow, Prime management organized a $1.3 billion "[[white knight (business)|white knight]]" [[leveraged buyout]] by [[J.H. Whitney & Company]]. Various problems dogged this project, the holding company organized by Whitney went bankrupt, and the resulting severe financial distress made it much harder for Prime to deal with the accelerating downturn in its core business.<ref name=NYT.92>{{cite news  |newspaper=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/12/business/market-place-buyout-of-prime-computer-limps-toward-completion.html |date=August 12, 1992 |title=Buyout of Prime Computer Limps Toward Completion |author=Floyd Norris}}</ref>

Prime's 1991 revenues of $1.2 billion were 25% lower than their 1988 revenues of $1.6 billion. Its computer sales were down by more than half ($377 million in 1989, $170 million in 1991), and by 1992 no new Prime Computers were being sold, portending a decline in its lucrative business of servicing computers made by Prime (and other manufacturers), a significant contributor to its already-declining revenues. A planned 1989 layoff of 1,200 employees<ref name=WP.99>{{cite news |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=December 29, 1988 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1988/12/29/prime-computer-to-lay-off-1200-workers/a227ab79-6b96-4f5d-ad38-5b03d596ea0d   |title=PRIME COMPUTER TO LAY OFF 1,200 WORKERS}}</ref> became much more: over 6,000, thus Prime's workforce dropped by over half, from 12,386 employees in 1988 to 5,900 by the end of 1991.<ref name=NYT.92/>

After the computer design and manufacturing portions of the company were shut down, the only viable business that remained was the [[Computervision]] subsidiary, an early pioneer in [[Computer-aided design|CAD]]/[[Computer-aided manufacturing|CAM]], which was acquired in a hostile takeover 1988. Prime was renamed Computervision, which in 1992 sold the declining remnants of its Prime Information subsidiary to [[VMark Software Inc]].<ref name=NYT.92/>

Computervision was subsequently successfully acquired by  [[Parametric Technology Corporation]] in 1998, a company founded in 1985 by a former Prime employee.<ref>{{cite web
 |url         = http://www.industryweek.com/articles/parametric_technology_corpbrwaltham_mass_268.aspx
 |title       = Parametric Technology Corp
 |website     = IndustryWeek.com
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20140202110022/http://www.industryweek.com/articles/parametric_technology_corpbrwaltham_mass_268.aspx
 |archive-date = 2014-02-02
}}</ref>