$100m company chief picks flaws in plan to create more

By ADAM GIFFORD

The Government's 10-year plan to foster the growth of 100 IT companies to point where they have revenue of $100 million each has been greeted with scepticism at one of only two New Zealand-owned companies to make that mark.

Garth Biggs, the chief executive of systems integrator and services company Gen-i, said that when he took over what was then Wang four years ago, the company had revenue of just over $100 million and 414 staff.

It now employs 670 people, and last year turned over more than $150 million.

"It has taken us 25 years to get to that level, and the only other New Zealand-owned company at the $100 million plus level is Datacom," Biggs said.

"We have grown by 250 people over the past four years, and I would feel put upon if the Government gave some tax incentive to some guy to come in and build a company of 250 people. I never got any incentives to do that."

He said one thing the Government could do was buy locally - a proposal also made by the Government's ICT industry taskforce.

"If the Government opened up more of their work to the market, we could all compete for it, the industry would get more profitable, it could invest in more innovation and hire more people."

Biggs said the $100 million target had structural impediments.

"I was talking to a guy who had been running a smaller company for 20 years, and I asked him if he came close to $100 million, would he stick around.

"'No,' he said, 'I'd cash up and get out.' We have seen that with Navman and everyone else.

"Maybe a better strategy would be to say, how would you double the size of Datacom and Gen-i."