OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

12 Months Ended

Oct. 30, 2011

OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS [Abstract]

OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

NOTE 20 - OTHER RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

The chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Company is also the vice chairman of the board and majority shareholder of a company that provides secure managed information technology services to Photronics. Another director of the Company is also a shareholder, chief executive officer and executive chairman of the board of this company. Since 2002, the Company has entered into various service contracts with this company to provide services to all of the Company's worldwide facilities. The Company incurred expenses for services provided by this company of $1.8 million, $2.6 million and $2.8 million in fiscal years 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively and, as of October 30, 2011, had an outstanding balance of $0.2 million due to this company. As of October 30, 2011, the Company had contracted with this company for various services through October 2013, at a cost of $3.2 million.

The Company purchases photomask blanks from a company of which an officer of the Company is a significant shareholder. The Company purchased $21.4 million, $21.9 million and $25.5 million of photomask blanks from this company in 2011, 2010 and 2009, respectively, for which the amount owed to this company was $2.9 million at October 30, 2011 and $4.3 million at October 31, 2010.

The Company believes that the terms of its transactions with related parties described above were negotiated at arm's length and were no less favorable to the Company than terms it could have obtained from unrelated third parties. See Note 4 for other related party transactions.