Xero rival poaches UK sales boss

Accounting firm Xero's main UK competitor Sage One has poached the company's UK Sales Manager, a month after the departure of Xero's United States chief executive Peter Karpas.

British accounting software firm Sage One has announced that Nick Longden has taken up the post as Sage One's general manager for the UK and Ireland, having been with Xero for two years.

In a release on Sage's website, Longden said he had been following Sage's success for a while before deciding to take up the role.

"As a champion of the software industry, I've followed Sage from afar and like many others, have had my own view of the company. Sage is a fantastic brand and undoubtedly the leading provider of accountancy and book keeping software to small businesses in the UK. Now is a great time to be joining," Longden said.

Xero chief executive Rod Drury saw the move as a compliment to the company, which he added had been doing well in the UK, and said he was happy for the departing Longden.

"It's pretty flattering, I mean you'd expect with the progress we're making in the UK for the incumbents to chase our staff, which they do all the time. We're big fans of Nick and we're pretty excited for him, he's a great guy. We see it as a compliment to us really," Drury said.

Longden, who had seen strong UK sales growth in Xero over his two years at the firm, said he was excited to be joining the firm.

Both Sage One and Xero have been seeing strong growth in the UK, with Sage One trebling its paid-for subscriptions to 33,000 over the year, according to figures released in March, and Xero more than doubling its customer numbers with growth of 103 per cent to 61,000 customers in the UK, and consistently strong growth seen over the last few years.

Drury said he was happy with the direction the company was heading, and said the Australian and UK markets were both gaining momentum, with the US following behind this.

"We're making good progress in getting strong US talent into the business and we've got a good team in the UK," he said. "With the appointment of people like Andy Lark, we're really putting in a strong team in the US now so things are going well."