Amor ‘just getting started’
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Pulling off a major deal in one of the UK economy’s most challenging years is no mean feat.
For John Innes, 18 months of sleepless nights paid off when the ink dried on a £28million management buyout and the creation of the Amor Group, Scotland’s largest independent IT company.
The move in May to acquire Pragma and Real Time – France-based Sword Group’s two Scottish IT service businesses – was a deal that still ranks as one of the largest transactions in the UK IT sector in recent years.
With turnover of £30million and 350 staff, Glasgow-based Amor is now moving forward with ambitious plans to double its size and revenue by 2012, creating more than 150 jobs across its locations in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Houston.
“We already employ 150 people in Aberdeen and we want to recruit more,” said Aberdeen-born Mr Innes.
“We’re now the biggest independent IT company in Scotland, but we’re just getting started.
“Our ambition is to double the business within three years through organic growth in our existing market sectors enhanced by further acquisitions.
“We are increasing sales internationally with a focus on the US and Middle East markets, where we have established operations and customer relationships.”
Amor provides managed IT services to customers in the energy, transport and public sectors, with a global client base that ranges from BAA, National Air Traffic Services, the NHS, the Scottish Government and ScottishPower to ExxonMobil, Total and Talisman Energy.
After spotting an opportunity when Sword announced its decision to focus on software, Mr Innes led the MBO with his colleagues Scott Leiper, Amor’s chief operating officer, and David Blyth, its chief financial officer.
The established client base, long-standing and profitable brands and a strong business plan attracted financial support from private-equity firm Growth Capital Partners and Scottish Enterprise, with senior debt funding from the Clydesdale Bank.
Sword has also retained an investment of about £8million in Amor.
The group is now aiming to become a leading global provider of business technology services to the energy, transport and public sectors.
Mr Innes said: “I’ve always believed in a plan. You need a plan to know where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.
“The fact that we were able to attract this level of interest and support in tough economic conditions is a measure of the confidence that our investors and customers have in our ability to deliver our business plan.
“We have excellent solutions, great people and a blue-chip customer base. We have a real understanding of the sectors we work in and I genuinely believed that the low point in the economic cycle was the right time to make this investment.
“Strategically, we see sustainable to strong information and communications technology (ICT) expenditure over the next five years in the energy, transport and public-sector markets that we currently address. We also see an increasing shift towards utility computing, where ICT is externally provided and ultimately delivered like other utilities such as electricity, water and gas.
“We have developed strong data and managed services capacity and solutions that align with this trend.”
Mr Innes, 52, has more than 25 years’ managerial experience in the oil and gas and IT sectors and is relishing his new role, in which he spends half his time in Aberdeen, where his home is, and the other half in Glasgow, where he has a flat. He was sales director at Aberdeen firm Pragma, delivering an increase in revenue from £400,000 in 2001 to £6million by 2005. Mr Innes said: “My biggest break was moving into IT in the 1990s and working with a number of experienced entrepreneurs and learning from them. Right people, right space.”
He has a strong “can do” approach that is evident throughout the group, which is about to undergo a re-branding. Later this month it will change the names of its two businesses to Amor Pragma and Amor Real Time and both will be renamed simply as Amor Group in 2011.
