Chris Shallow, who set up his own AST Research Inc distribution company in the Czech Republic after being made redundant from his post of business development manager of AST Central and Eastern Europe when AST closed its office in Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic in 1992, claims that after just one year in business, his new company, Compartners SRO, is vying with AST’s Hungarian distributor – USA Systems – as the largest AST distribution company in eastern Europe. Mr Shallow said the firm’s 1993 revenues hit the equivalent of $2.5m, exceeding that of the Czech Republic’s other authorised distributor, Softram SRO, also based in Mlada Boleslav. Mr Shallow has recently established a new company, Manhattan Systems, which has become the first authorised reseller of AST’s symmetric multiprocessing systems in the region. Compartners is owned jointly by Mr Shallow along with former Softram employees who defected from Softram when Compartners set up shop, and two outside investors with minor shareholdings.
