Freecom.net ponders sell off
The upheaval at Freecom.net continued last week as the acquisitive reseller-turned-vendor said it was considering selling part of its business.
The upheaval at Freecom.net continued last week as the acquisitive reseller-turned-vendor said it was considering selling part of its business.
Freecom.net issued a statement last Friday saying it had been in discussions regarding the possible sale of a material part of the business. However, it added that the negotiations were tentative and there was no certainty that an agreement would be reached on the terms of any transaction.
Sage denied that it was interested in acquiring Freecom.net, which has recently bought accountancy vendors Pegasus and Systems Union, and Birmingham based web services provider, Oneview.net.
In a further twist, three directors of Oneview.net resigned from the board after "a number of differences of opinion" arose between themselves and the board of Freecom.net regarding the future direction of Oneview.net. Chairman Stuart Lawley, managing director Steven Salmon and sales and marketing director Stephen Winyard left the company last week, and will hand back more than £15m of Freecom.net shares over the next year.
In addition, the future of Systems Union was the subject of intense speculation following rumours that the company's entire UK workforce had been offered voluntary redundancy. Systems Union was unavailable for comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, former Pegasus commercial director Chris Leak, who quit the vendor three weeks ago, has resurfaced at Derby based internet reseller, Dragnet. Leak has joined the company on a consultancy basis. Jonathon Hubbard Ford, who quit his post as Pegasus chief executive in January, has also joined the board of Dragnet, and former Pegasus southern area sales manager Alan Watkins is also at the company.
Richard Goodley, managing director at Dragnet, said Leak and Hubbard Ford had joined the company because they had seen a "large opportunity". He said Dragnet's front-end web application offers strong replication of back-end software from vendors such as Pegasus and Sage, and argued that Freecom.net's Intershop front-end application currently had "paper thin" integration. He refused to rule out the prospect of further Pegasus employees joining Dragnet.
First published in Computer Reseller News