Brierley alumni look to Infinity

By ADAM GIFFORD

While Singapore-based Brierley Investments makes noises about moving the company into technology investments, members of its former management team in New Zealand are building a technology empire on their own account.

Former chief executive Paul Collins, chairman Bruce Hancox and legal counsel Patsy Reddy are the leading lights in Active Equities, which, after buying a minority stake last year in IT engineering and systems integration firm Trilogy Group, has created IT holding company Infinity Group.

Active Equities owns 56 per cent of Infinity. The other shares are owned by the previous shareholders of the companies who have been brought into the fold.

So far these include Trilogy, Madison Group, which specialises in mid-range IBM systems and applications, Quanta Systems, which makes distribution and financial software management systems, and 75 per cent of InfoVista, a Sydney-based company which builds intranets and extranets.

"Those companies were all owned by management, so there was a combination of cash and share-swapping to bring them into Infinity Group," said Infinity chief executive Ross Baker, a former New Zealand Post and Telecom senior executive.

"What we saw was, they were being managed for the shareholders to get a reasonable income and while the industry was growing, they weren't.

"The shareholders didn't want to put more capital in."

He said the companies needed capital and marketing-oriented management to grow.

There were also opportunities to increase the number of IT services that were being provided to existing customers.

Infinity Group's capabilities span engineering services, value-added reselling, software development, systems integration and e-commerce.

The companies will continue to trade separately, but there could be integration of engineering and other divisions.

While Infinity includes "steady-earning" companies such as Trilogy and Madison, it is also interested in high-growth software businesses and has some money set aside for venture capital for embryonic businesses which would feed into the wider group.

Mr Baker said Infinity expected its real growth would come offshore, and is on the lookout for similar under-performing companies in Australia and "non-Japanese Asia."

He said Infinity would list on the sharemarket when the market was suitable.

Projections for next year are for turnover of between $50 million and $60 million.

"I aim to be a $300-million company in three years, but I don't want to live and die on that," Mr Baker said.