Scottish MSP Amor eyes big growth after buyout by Lockheed

Huge defence and aerospace firm wants to be major UK ICT player with help of ambitious Glasgow firm

Aerospace and defence giant Lockheed Martin wants to cement its place as one of the UK ICT market's foremost providers after acquiring Scottish managed services provider (MSP) Amor Group.

The deal, which has been agreed for an undisclosed sum, will see all of Amor's 500-plus staff join the UK arm of Lockheed's Information Systems & Global Solutions business. The UK firm will move from its current US base in Houston and will also close its London satellite office, but will maintain its seven other locations, comprising Coventry, Manchester, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, two sites in its hometown of Glasgow and a Middle East outpost in Dubai.

Dan Norton, UK general manager at Lockheed, told CRN: "We are always looking to add accretive [growth] but we do not just buy sales – we want a capability that we do not possess or [access to] a market that we are not in.

"We are not going to break [the Amor team] apart, spread them around or through the corporation. We are going to keep them together but work on the synergies and enhance our energy and public sector business."

In 2012 Amor banked EBITDA of £8.1m on sales that grew almost 27 per cent to £57.2m, with UK annuity services revenue adding £32.6m to the top line, alongside £13.1m in UK product sales and £7.4m in turnover outside this country. The company's annual report for the year laid out ambitious plans to increase turnover to £250m by 2016, via a combination of organic and acquisitive growth.

Scott Leiper, chief operating officer at Amor, claimed his firm's acquisition by Lockheed would give its expansion plans a shot in the arm, particularly for its Chroma platform of airport operations technologies.

"We have the same people and the same [growth] plan, but we are now able to accelerate what we are doing internationally. We can take our Chroma set of products all across the North American market," he added. "There will be no job losses on the back of this deal – it is going to expedite our job-creation plans."

Headquartered in Bethseda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is perhaps most famous for the manufacture of planes and missiles. With annual sales of $47.2bn (£29.8bn) in 2012, the firm is the world's 216th largest by revenue, and the 61st biggest in the US, according to the Fortune Global 500.