Microsoft Purchases Stake In Belgian Firm

Microsoft Corp. said it will invest $45 million in Belgium’s Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products NV, representing about a 10 percent stake in the maker of computer speech programs.

Lernout is developing software that transforms the spoken voice into documents. The company, which is also developing software for the automated translation of documents, has customers in telecommunications, multimedia and car navigation companies.

“It is a very important deal for us,” Gaston Bastiaens, co-chairman of Lernout & Hauspie, said in an interview. “It’s a win-win situation for both companies.”

He said Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft will get about 1.4 million new Lernout shares for its investment. Microsoft has an option to invest another $15 million at $35 a share before the end of 1998.

Microsoft stock rose $1.68-3/4 to $136.81-1/4. Lernout shares rose 3.31, or 7.2 percent, to close at $34.19, after rising as high as $40.25, in trading on the Nasdaq Exchange.