Paxus Corp Pty Ltd, the systems software company has aquired the exclusive worldwide marketing rights of Orchard Business Systems’ products, a UK company specialising in public accounting software. Paxus, based in Auckland, New Zealand also produces public accounting software systems as well as covering practice management and taxation systems. Although the user bases of the two companies occasionally overlap, Paxus’ software is Unix-based, whereas Orchard’s software is written for MS-DOS and Novell Inc’s NetWare. Orchard, based in Horsham, Sussex, has a turnover of around UKP5m and a user base of 3,000 in the UK. Back in 1987 the company was almost taken over by the Star Computer Group Plc, which eventually settled for marketing rights instead. Fortunately for Paxus, the rights were re-sold to Orchard in 1988 and Paxus has now all but formally succeeded in acquiring Orchard. Paxus seems to be hedging its bets by acquiring MS-DOS-based systems. The company which is 49% owned by General Accident and 15% owned by IBM, turns over more than UKP100m worldwide, one third of that in Europe. It has been in the UK for four years, but is now looking to enlarge its UK base in anticipation of the Single European Market leading to growth in the continental accounting software market. Paxus will support and invest in the development of Orchard products. The combination of Paxus and Orchard is controversially claimed to create the largest accountancy software company in Europe.
