A Scottish veteran of the information technology services business has instigated a push to consolidate the fragmented training market with the seven-figure acquisition of operations serving the key London and Birmingham markets.
Scott Haddow, formerly head of Computacenter's Scottish operations, has masterminded the deals in his new role as head of franchised training specialist New Horizons in the UK.
The 34-year-old was head-hunted to run New Horizons by Scottish property and travel entrepreneur John Stodart earlier this year, after spend- ing 12 years working in increasingly senior roles in IT.
The business owned by Stodart ran four training centres using the New Horizons brand, which is franchised from its US owners. These are based in Edinburgh - the headquarters of the the UK business - Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester.
Stodart has owned the operation for four years.
Haddow said when Stodart came looking for someone to help grow the business to the next level he was happy to jump ship from Computacenter, whose Scottish operations he had been running since 2005.
"I wanted to an opportunity to build something that was not in the mature state or size of Computacenter," said Haddow, who took a minority stake in the New Horizons business owned by Stodart.
The purchases completed by the company will see it more than doubling in size by taking over franchised New Horizons centres running in London and Birmingham.
These provide training in IT for staff employed by corporations and public authorities, a market growing rapidly as ever more organisations outsource non-core operations.
The Edinburgh-based operation has sales of around £5m and employs 55 staff. The enlarged New Horizons UK will have turnover of £10m and 120 staff.
Haddow expects turnover in the first year after the deal to increase to £15m, on which he expects to make a profit of around 10%. This should put New Horizons UK into the top five in the UK training market.
Haddow is targeting sales of £40m to £50m within five years and sees scope to use more acquisitions to accelerate growth. As there are many small players in the training market there would be obvious opportunities for a consolidator.
Maxima Holdings, the business developed from a former subsidiary of Weir Group, has pursued a similar strategy in the market for IT services such as networking and security.
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