'There is absolutely a hunger to make an acquisition' - MTI CEO

Scott Haddow, head of MTI Europe, hints at potential North American acquisition

The CEO of data storage integrator MTI Europe, Scott Haddow, told CRN he is "very pleased" with the results of his team's first year in the company as he hinted at possible acquisitions.

Haddow (pictured) became CEO of the organisation in February last year, after overseeing Trustmarque's £57m sale to Capita.

Before his installation, MTI UK's revenue had dropped from £43.2m to £39.7m between its fiscal 2015 and 2017.

Haddow said the numbers he has seen for this year are encouraging. He attributed this to a number of changes made in personnel and investments. "We couldn't really have changed much more in a 12-month period than we have," he said. Revenue and profitability are up by "double digits", with MTI now looking beyond its boundaries for new acquisitions.

Together with MTI's private equity owner, Endless Capital, MTI is searching for the "right" type of acquisitions in either Europe or America, Haddow said.

Reticent when asked whether he had a particular acquisition in mind, Haddow did explain what the company is looking for: "It will be complementary to what MTI does, and that will either be through access to skills, customers, or it might be access to offerings that we don't have but we aspire to have, and we think we can buy it [rather] than grow it organically".

Haddow said that geography is not "contentious" for MTI - which currently has offices in the UK, France and Germany - when seeking out possible acquisitions. "There's absolutely an appetite to make an acquisition in the UK, France or Germany, or indeed further afield, potentially in North America," he said.

Although EMC is MTI's largest historic vendor, its acquisition by Dell has played into MTI's hands, Haddow claimed.

"We have greater access to more skills, resources, partnering; it gives us an opportunity to move into different sectors and technologies that Dell have in their portfolio - things such as networking and server," he said.