IBM Corp has picked up an attractive and highly visible facilities management contract from Citicorp’s floundering Quotron Systems Inc financial information services company and direct competitor for that side of Reuters Holdings Plc’s business. Under a five-year contract that has not been announced by either side, the Wall Street Journal understands that Quotron will end its development and maintenance of computer terminals and hand the business over to IBM, and Quotron will transfer its software to IBM’s RS/6000 Unix servers supporting PS/2s as terminals. IBM will also transfer all Quotron traffic to its Information Network and will assume responsibility for installation, service and support for Quotron customers. In the third quarter, Citicorp wrote down its investment in Quotron, taking a $400m charge to write down the value of Quotron hardware. It has invested over $1,000m in the company, but has never seen a profit from it. The move gives IBM direct access to potentially lucrative customers on Wall Street, a position it originally sought by forming a joint venture, International MarketNet, with Merrill Lynch & Co which collapsed after software development problems.
