Nortek’s Linear Group Acquires Gefen, LiteTouch

Well whaddya know, I finally got one right: Nortek's Linear group acquired LiteTouch and Gefen. I've speculated in the past that Nortek -- or perhaps AMX -- would buy those companies, but time and again I've missed the boat.

Linear quietly acquired Gefen, a signal processing company, earlier in the year. And here at the Electronic House Expo, Linear announced -- rather whispered -- that it acquired lighting control company LiteTouch.

The two companies complement Linear's stable of home technology companies which now includes ChannelPlus/Open House, Elan Home Systems, Furman, Imerge, GTO, Linear, M&S Systems, Niles Audio, OmniMount, Panamax, SpeakerCraft, Proficient Audio, Sunfire and Xantech.

With Legrand acquiring Vantage, a LiteTouch rival, last year, that leaves little in the way of independent residential lighting-control companies.

Lutron and Leviton I don't consider to be independent. They're behemoths, very closely held, and not about to be sold.

So there's Centralite, a provider of moderaly priced, highly regarded systems. Who would buy Centralite? I doubt they'll be ready to be acquired for about five more years, but we would have to look beyond the usual suspects of AMX (Duchossois) and D&M.

Perhaps some kind of deal with Channel Vision, the last of the largest structured wiring vendors. Maybe a security company? Honeywell, perhaps? Even GE Security would seem to make sense.

As for Gefen, the company practically invented the digital processing category, with its range of extenders, switchers, and converters. Plenty rivals have emerged since the early days -- Key Digital and Knox come to mind. I can see D&M acquiring Key Digital. Legrand might be a prospect, too, since Key Digital would complement its OnQ and UStec structured-wiring lines.