A new company, Intelco Ltd, has just been established in Slough, Berkshire to provide rental contracts for tertiary level computer suppliers. The company was announced by two ex-founding directors of the UK rental company Parc Ltd, and George Cranmer, who is ex-senior vice-president of American Finance Group Inc. Following the success of Parc, which has developed an UKP800m base in four years and has recently been bought out by merchant bankers Kleinwort Benson, Intelco has been formed with backing from unidentified banks with a view to operating mainly in the rental of machines in the UKP50,000 to UKP100,000 price range. The chairman of Intelco insists that the new company will not be engaging in head on competition with Parc which offers rental contracts for ICL and Unisys, saying that Intelco is looking for business with customers of Honeywell Bull, NCR, and Hewlett Packard. Intelco claims to be unique in that it is offering smaller suppliers marketing expertise in hire service. For example, it will design rental programmes and literature, train salespeople within the supplier’s company, and allocate each company an accounts manager. The manufacturer remains responsible to the customer for all back-up services, thereby cutting out the need to bring in a third party maintainance company. At the user end the rental programme offers customers the flexibility of being able to upgrade their systems regularly without worrying about resale values. Intelco will announce its first rental contract offers in January, and hopes to be doing UKP200m a year by 1991.