Haddow: New-look Trustmarque won't be closing offices

New-look Trustmarque kicks off recruitment drive as it looks to the future

The new-look Trustmarque has said it will not close any of its offices as it finalises the integration of Trinity, insisting that growing headcount is a priority.

Earlier this week, fellow Liberata-owned businesses Trustmarque and Trinity merged, four months after the former was snapped up by the business-processes firm amid financial trouble.

The old Trustmarque business had bases in York, Manchester, Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, while Trinity also had offices in the capital, along with in Coventry and Sheffield. Haddow (pictured above) insisted that despite the overlap in London, he would not be closing any locations.

"There is a complementary mix across the whole of the UK so at this point there is no need to close any offices," he said. "There are two London offices but given that there is a relatively high number of employees in the organisation, we have a requirement for all the desks we have."

The combined headcount at Trustmarque now stands at 600 - 200 from the Trustmarque business and 400 from Trinity.

When asked if his cost-saving plan would involve reducing headcount across the new-look business, Haddow said: "There has been natural attrition in certain back-office and support functions of the business and that happened pre-Christmas - not a high number. The majority of the cost savings are coming from where we had a high number of vacancies across the Trustmarque and Trinity businesses.

"When you bring them together, you start to populate those vacancies from the other business so you don't have to hire additional people in those roles. We will save on recruitment agencies, bringing people on and training them and developing them. But we are looking to increase headcount and are actively recruiting now."

Liberata took over both Trinity and Trustmarque during periods of financial trouble, but Haddow insisted the future financial landscape for the combined firms looks positive.

"Last year Trustmarque was a profitable business - despite a challenging summer - and the Trinity business was also a profitable business," he said. "So a combined entity will be a more profitable business and we are looking to grow that. Revenue is expected to be in the region of £170m in FY15."

He added that a merger between the two Liberata businesses was on the cards pretty much from the beginning.

"We had a very early heads-up with the Liberata team about what we thought we should do with both Trustmarque and the Trinity business and it was clear the best way would be to put the two businesses together," he said. "That was decided from the middle to the end of September."

But deciding which brand name to keep was a more difficult process, he added.

"We discussed it long and hard and the Trustmarque business has a very, very good, strong brand, particularly in the public sector, and the Trinity business has a good, strong brand in the commercial sector, particularly financial services," he said. "We felt for what the business would look like going forwards and for the customer base we would be serving, the Trustmarque brand would be the better brand and that is not to be disparaging to the Trinity brand and what that does and what that means."

Scott Haddow will retain his role as chief executive at the newly merged firm alongside sales and marketing director Angelo Di Ventura (pictured left). Trinity's former chief executive Allan Jackson has become chief operating officer of Trustmarque.

Di Ventura said the public sector will continue to be a priority in 2015 and beyond.

"We have many customers in the private sector world and we are still hiring people to service customers in the private sector," he said. "That said, it's not news that Trustmarque has a significant footprint in the public sector - in central and local government and particularly in healthcare.

"We have been selling software licensing and SAM services into those and there is a significant opportunity to take what was the Trinity capability into those customers. [The new Trustmarque] will be as focused on the public sector as the old Trustmarque business. Some of the things we will be selling into those customers will be different - now we have very mature professional services, managed services and cloud services on top of serving those with SAM and software services."