Network Connection Ltd has been bought out from its parent company, the Winprime Group, by its two managing directors, Mike Cleugh and Ian Wilson. The majority of the finance was provided by Barclays Development Capital Limited in a deal worth several hundreds of thousands of pounds. Ian Wilson, one of the new owners, says that the buyout was negotiated and the result of a mutual agreement between Winprime and the buyers with the initiative coming from the Network Connection management. The company was set up in 1987 by Winprime with Ian Wilson and Mike Cleugh as directors. It currently has a turnover running at UKP1.8m and a staff of 20. Profits last year were around UKP180,000. Ian Wilson says the company intends to continue with its core businesses of network integration services for Apple Computer Inc Macintoshes and MS-DOS personal computers to DEC VAXes, as well as Ethernet links, but that it will be expanding the range of hardware and operating systems to include Unix and its derivatives. New service areas that the company hopes to get in to include Fibre Distributed Data Interface, fibre optics, and on the software side, X400 electronic mail. It will also be looking at the Unix and RISC-based workstation market. Wilson reckons that the company could be in shape to go public in around three years’ time, but it all depends on the networking market in the next three years. However, if the opportunity is there, he says it is certainly an option he will consider.
