Gloucester-based Sherwood Computer Services Plc, which was rescued by an injection of cash from British & Commonwealth Plc last year, has now been rescued from that finance company’s Administrators by The World Software Group BV of The Netherlands. When British & Commonwealth took a 25% stake in the company last September, it set up three funds to manage the investment: Colonnade Development Capital Plc, British & Commonwealth Development Capital Ltd and B&C Ventures Investments Ltd. Later in 1989 Strategem bought Colonnade out, but the two British & Commonwealth funds and Strategem decided to sell their share stakes simultaneously to World Software. The Dutch group has acquired a total of 1.8m, 8.5 pence, convertible preference shares of 10 pence each in Sherwood. This represents 71% of all preference shares in issue which would, if converted into ordinary shares, represent 18% of Sherwood’s enlarged share capital. World Software’s mission is to take minority stakes in software companies and develop synergies between them without taking control. At the last count (CI No 1,362), it held 19% of the Dutch software company Volmac (out of which it developed), 11% of Computer Task Group (in which IBM holds 15.2%) and 5% of Computer Services Inc. Sherwood’s finance director David Lawrence says that his company has met with World Software and feels comfortable about the relationship between the two of them. Sherwood is extremely interested in collaborating with Volmac.
