Ashford, Middlesex-based James Martin Associates, famed both for its eponymous founder and the marketing of Texas Instruments Inc’s Information Engineering Facility is now firmly under the control of James Martin the man. For the company’s previous chairman and co-founder Tony Carter has sold his controlling interest in the company to James Martin for an undisclosed sum. The company itself continues to flourish under the Billy Graham like presence of Martin, with profits growing at a rate of around 100% each year on a turnover that has been built up to UKP25m in eight years. Under Martin’s control the company is now being restructured with JMA Information Engineering Ltd being responsible for the distribution of the Information Engineering Facility throughout Europe, while two other groupings have been formed around the European (JMA Europe) and American (JMA North America) markets to deal with telecommunications and system consultancy. Carter is leaving the company to pursue his first love, which is rugby. After 28 years in the computer industry he felt the time had come to move into sports management. He will still, however, retain a small shareholding in James Martin Associates, and will be around to help out at board meetings as a non-executive director, helping new James Martin Associates group managing director David Fairbairn to get started. As for the near future, the company is promising that it will shortly release some new products that are not directly related to computeraided software engineering.
