Headland Group Plc’s fall from grace into administrative receivership (CI No 1,478) has resulted in the sale of Wootton Jeffreys Plc to Sherwood Computer Services Plc. The Gloucester-based company is paying UKP300,000 in cash for the trading assets and intellectual property rights of Wootton Jeffreys, which was the first acquisition that Geoff Bristow made after assuming control of the Compsoft shell. It supplies bespoke software services and systems to central and local government, primarily based on Prime equipment. In the year to December 31 1989, Wootton Jeffreys made an unaudited pre-tax loss of UKP25,000 on a turnover of UKP3m, and the book value of the company’s assets is estimated at UKP535,000. It disposed of its consultancy arm for UKP523,745 in management buyout earlier this year (CI No 1,399). Sherwood, which received a cash injection from the now distressed British & Commonwealth Holdings Plc and only escaped that company’s administrators when The World Software Group BV acquired British & Commonwealth’s shareholding (CI No 1,451) – says that Wootton Jeffreys will expand its presence in the central government sector. The company still derives 57% of turnover from Sherwood Business Systems which specialises in the Lloyd’s of London market, but the second arm is Sherwood Computer Management and has been increasingly active in both local and central government sectors (CI No 1,404).
