NMW Computers Plc, the Nantwich, Cheshire-based financial software and computer services company, has agreed to pay UKP527,319 to acquire Business Recovery Services Ltd – BRS – a company providing hot and cold re-start recovery facilities, on ICL Plc hardware, to customers at its Standby Centre in Portsmouth. NMW chief executive Nigel Banister said back in October that his company was on the verge of making further acquisitions, following the purchase of Charterhouse Group Plc last May (CI No 1,776), and has been known to be interested in the area of disaster recovery for some time. BRS will be merged with NMW’s own stand-by business to form a new subsidiary, Crisis Management Services Ltd, which the company claims will make NMW the largest manufacturer-independent provider of ICL disaster recovery services in the UK. The emphasis here is on independence, since the Sherwood Computer Services Plc-ICL Plc joint venture (CI No 1,664), now called Guardian, is the number one ICL-based disaster standby business. A spokesman for NMW said BRS brought to the party a wider range of ICL equipment than NMW had previously. Ian Clover, managing director of BRS, will run the new subsidiary with a team of specialists based in Nantwich, Portsmouth and London. BRS brings UKP650,000 of contracted revenue for 1992 and a client base covering central and the local government, banking, insurance, retail and manufacturing sectors. BRS has 30 customers, compared with NMW’s 10, in the disaster recovery business, so it’s probably fair to say that the acquisition is as much client-based as anything.
