Thorn EMI Computeraid, the computer services company which is part of the Home Electronics division of Thorn EMI group, has acquired the rental assets of CCA Microrentals for an undisclosed sum. The CCA Microrentals group went into receivership in February (CI No 1,364), including among its businesses the sale of new and used personal computers and an Apple Centre. Howev er, Thorn has acquired only the personal computer rental business which has an annual turnover of UKP700,000 and comes with a staff of 10. Computeraid Microrentals, as the new business will be called, is under the control of Francois Moscovici. He has, hitherto, been working within the Thorn group to build up a rental service via acquisition. Microren tals deals in the short term rental of IBM, Compaq and Apple personal computers. However, Brian Watts, marketing director of Computeraid, is exploring the possibility of medium and long term rental, as well as renting out workstations and file servers. Micro rentals which will be based in Fulham, hopes to grow its business among Computeraid’s large corporate cus tomers where networking is very much the key issue.
