Geac Computer Corp, the giant Canadian group which specializes in buying out distressed software firms, has just doubled the size of its restaurant management division with the acquisition Remanco International Inc, based in Boston, Massachusetts. Remanco is a private, owner managed company with revenues of around $14m a year from selling Point of Sale (POS) systems to Hotel and Restaurant chains, including hand held remote terminals for restaurant staff to communicate with a ‘back office’ system. The company is currently making a loss, and hence fits with Geac’s favored ‘buy it cheap and turn it around’ style of corporate growth. Although the scale of on-going losses at this latest acquisition wasn’t disclosed, Geac said the company wasn’t yet close to receivership. An undisclosed cash sum is being offered for all of the outstanding shares in Remanco and the business will be incorporated into Geac’s existing $24m a year hospitality division, boosting its presence in one of the smaller of its nine niche vertical markets. In nine months to January 1998, Geac reached the equivalent of $327m in total revenues, having grown by 95% over the prior year. The Canadian company has ambitions to sell its own range of Point of Sale systems through Remanco’s distribution channel in the US, a factor which formed the largest slice of the cash offered, Geac said. Remanco’s proprietary technology was considered more of a bonus in the acquisition. Remanco claims to have an installed base of 6,000 POS systems worldwide.
