Reading, Berkshire-based Sintrom Plc is blaming its pre-tax losses of UKP274,000 for the year on depressed trading conditions in its peripheral distribution business. Turnover dropped 15% to just under UKP29m largely because of the sale of Perex in December 1989, although revenues from Sintrom’s other businesses have stood still, rather then growing. Chairman Tom Dalzell appears to have dispensed with another managing director – Ian Hillier-Brook has left the company to pursue other interests, Terry Cave left the position in January 1990. Dalzell has himself stepped into the position and as he holds the majority of shares, it will be interesting to see how he manages without a fall guy to squeeze when the going gets tough. Last March, the group reorganised all its networking activities into the Sintrom Datanet business and is now pursuing this pattern with the distribution and maintenance activities, putting them altogether within Sintrom Electronics and under the control of newly appointed Bernard Fisher who has senior management experience at Northern Telecom Ltd, Data 100 Corp, Paradyne Corp and Masstor Systems Corp. Under new management Sintrom Electronics will re-enter the Digital Equipment Corp market with a wide range of third-party mass storage systems. It has also developed its own range of removable Winchester disk drives for the personal computer market – based on Conner 3.5 drives, the Stowaway range is touted as being 30% less expensive than equivalent removables. Dalzell says that despite an approach from a third-party in February to acquire the distribution and maintenance companies, no offer for the company was received or is in contemplation nor, in the absence of any firm proposals, is any sale of its distribution and maintenance companies now in prospect. He admits that the first four months of the current financial year has seen a further deterioration on the losses experienced in the second half of 1990. However, he is not ruling out a return to profitability by year-end driven by the UK economy.