Telecomputing Plc appears – despite melodramatic adventures with ex-director Bernard Panton which has cost the company UKP69,000 in extraordinary payments – to have had a reasonably good year. Pre-tax loss was down to UKP103,000 from UKP777,000 on turnover down 17% to just over UKP2m. Furthermore, the company has announced (CI No 1,615) that a merger is under way with the Southampton-based Gresham Group – effectively Gresham is reversing into Telecomputing and availing itself of the latter’s share quote. Telecomputing is to make an all share offer for Gresham which is a computer services group operating in the ICL market, is profitable, and has a turnover of UKP9m. The merger will come about by Telecomputing acquiring Revax Ltd, the holding company of the Gresham Group, for a sum that has not yet been disclosed. The combined companies will then trade under the name Gresham Computing Plc and will operate in the ICL mainframe systems software, applications software, Unix systems, hardware broking and personnel agency markets. Telecomputing chairman Anthony Evans believes that his company’s reduction of losses was enabled by the reorganisation that got underway after Panton left and the company refocused its activities on its transaction processing products. However, the board is aware that Telecomputing is too small on its own to make a go of the new opportunities opening up in the ICL market following Fujitsu Ltd’s assumption of control. But when merged with Gresham, Telecomputing will have a much more viable financial base. It seems Gresham and Telecomputing have been working together for some time on new product ideas to follow on from products such as tp+ and DataServe, and employees from the two companies are already working together on a large software project Gresham has under taken for a customer in the City of London.
