With all the excitement about the success of the privatisation of National Freight Corporation, which was floated off as an employee-owned company and is now coming to market, there is another example of a successful employee-owned company that has a much longer track record than National Freight – and is still able to operate an internal market for its shares that operates well enough that it has no interest in going public. That company is Computer Management Group Ltd, and its employee-owned status is believed to be behind its latest coup. It has won the bidding for the Intergemeentelijk Centrum voor Informatieverwerking, a computer bureau based in Haarlem, Netherlands that serves more than 100 municipalities and is currently owned by the city councils of Haarlem, Haarlemermeer and Zaanstad. The business of the bureau is expected to add UKP3m to Computer Management Group’s turnover this year – the Group did UKP5.7m pre-tax on sales of UKP59.8m in 1987, and will increase the proportion of its business done in the Netherlands significantly: in 1987 it already did 51% there against 47% here, and 2% in West Germany.
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