Admiral tight-lipped about job cuts claim

Admiral has folded its software distribution unit, Admiral Software, into its customer solutions division, in a move that it described as ?creating a more efficient structure?.

But a former managing director of the company claimed that the distribution unit was effectively shut down four weeks ago and that there have already been a number of redundancies.

Peter Huish claimed that all Admiral Software sales people were made redundant at the end of last year. ?Admiral Software has lost all of its distribution,? he said.

?It tried to make its technical team into sales people. Instead, it?s been placed as a business group under another Admiral company.?

Huish said there had been 20 to 24 people at Admiral Software when he worked for the company. ?They haven?t brought in any new software distribution since I left.?

But sales director of Admiral Customer Solutions Brian Rowe would neither confirm nor deny any rumoured redundancies.?What?s happened is that Admiral has formed a larger software company,? he said.

?One was a product company and the other was a distribution company. We have brought them together under the one management team and there has been a change in structure.?

He said that the company still existed and traded as Admiral Software. ?The business they?re doing, in part, continues. Admiral Software continues as a legal entity and a trading company. There are several products we?re good at and we?ll continue with them.?

But Rowe declined to say which software products were still distributed. ?Our customers know which ones they are,? he said.

He added: ?Huish has an axe to grind and we do as well, and we can?t comment on it. We?ve had a management restructuring and Admiral Software is now under Admiral Customer Solutions.?

Mike Hensmann, executive vice president at Cyrano Soft- ware, whose products are distributed by Admiral Software, said: ?I?m trying to discover what the situation is and I?m talking to Brian [Rowe].

?I understand some jobs have been lost at the firm.?