GFI Informatique SA, the services company bought by Electronic Data Systems Corp last year, has reported that group revenue rose by 22% in 1991 to $221.9m, 1,220m French francs. Jacques Tordman, managing director, refuses to divulge last year’s profit figures, but claims that net profits rose by 36%. The company says that half its revenue growth was generated by existing operations, but the rest came through a number of acquisitions. GFI snapped up several French and Belgian systems and service companies during 1991, including Niris; SLIB which develops financial systems for the AS/400; Telcom, a facilities management specialist; a systems engineering outfit called Cori; the Belgian AS/400 specialist, Projet; the Digital Equipment Corp software house, Ylys; and Infosys, a relational database and software engineering company. GFI has doubled the number of employees to 2,350, and it has opened subsidiaries in Greece, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Poland. In addition, Tordjman indicated that GFI will making further announcements in the coming weeks, focusing on facilities management and a possible joint venture with IBM. He expects 1992 to a difficult year, but anticipates that GFI will sustain it growth and profit margins. The company plans to concentrate on both open systems and the AS/400. $23.1m, 125m francs, came from AS/400 business during 1991, and the majority of revenue is derived from IBM projects – 51% – followed by Bull with 32%, a mixture of Tandem/ Hewlett-Packard/ DEC/ Unisys machines comprises 12% of revenue, and so-called open systems come in at 5%. GFI says that when looked at as part of EDS, combined revenues represent between 20% and 25% of EDS’ European revenues, $1,500m.
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