Ambitious telecoms VAR Chess has lauded its flexible approach to acquisitions after buying out part of the customer bases of rivals Sunstone and Puma Telecom.

Chess has bought some 300 business customers from Sunstone and 500 from Puma, the bulk of which are fixed-line subscribers.

The deals, Chess’ 28th and 29th respectively, allow both companies to stay in business while giving them access to money to reinvest as part of future growth plans.

Chess director Richard Btesh claimed the latest deals demonstrated Chess’ flexibility and would help it attract businesses that wanted to free up some capital, but did not want to exit the market entirely.

“This is not really first choice for us, but we are happy to do it in certain circumstances. It is usually better and cleaner to buy every single customer, but saying we can take part of a company’s customer base differentiates us from the competition,” he said.

Btesh added that he hoped to tie up an average of one acquisition per month throughout the remainder of 2008.

Rob Bamforth, principal analyst for Quocirca, said: “Times are tough and a lot of companies are looking for ways to cut back.
“But even in a recession, it is important to have good, strategic reasons for doing so.”