Following the acquisition of wholesale banking company IBIS Ltd, (CI No 2,978) Roger Foster’s Financial Objects Ltd has reported sales of 5m pounds in the fourth quarter of its first year of operation. Executive chairman Foster, the man responsible for the sale of Apricot Computers Ltd to Mitsubishi Electronic Corp, set up Financial Objects in December 1995, setting aside 1996 for the development of Domino, a component-based rapid application development environment for the banking world. Domino, originally set to roll out in October running under Windows NT, was held back in order to incorporate Microsoft Corp’s change of heart over its ActiveX and Internet technologies. If we hadn’t held back with Domino’s development, said sales director Ian Chester, the technology applied would have been out of date by now. The year also saw the unplanned purchase of IBIS, described by Chester as too good an opportunity to miss, enabling Financial Objects to branch out on an international scale with offices now in Luxembourg, Singapore, New York, Prague and Bangkok. The IBIS name was retained for its products, but the company took the Financial Objects name. It is set to launch IBIS/AS Release 7 in the third quarter, incorporating new technology enabling the product the run via the Internet which Foster believes will give it a new lease of life, adding to the 5m pounds of orders that have already been placed by institutions such as Lloyds Bank Plc, Alliance & Leicester and Guinness Mahon. The firm spent 1996 further developing Quartz, the Unix client-server banking system, on which Financial Objects has been working with Tata Sons & Co Pvt Ltd in Bombay. Foster said development was progressing well and he looked forward to a continued partnership with the Indian company. Financial Objects has also been working on the development of the Year 2000 Vaccination Center, a program designed to prevent system errors and difficulties occurring at the turn of the century. However, it does not believe that IBIS and Quartz products will be affected by the Year 2000 Problem, because the applications work on an eight-digit basis, and not six, which is where difficulties are being experienced. Commenting on the first year of trading, Foster said: We want to bring the whole technology development forward. 1997 will see the first shipment of IBIS and Quartz and we are looking for high growth to 1999.
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