The acquisition of the Harlequin Group, a UK-based software company which was bought from the receivers for 21m euro ($22.4m) earlier this month by Global Graphics SA, will have a dramatic impact on profits of the Pompey, France printing equipment and software company. Chairman and CEO Johan Volckaerts says that Harlequin is likely to generate more profit over the next 12 months than the whole of the group made last year. Harlequin is a leading supplier of raster image processing (RIP) software for the printing industry with annual sales of around 21m euros ($22.4m).
But Harlequin was forced into receivership because it had been making massive investments in R&D in information management and software tools applications. These have now been stopped and the company slimmed down from 230 people to 133. Harlequin’s purchase is the latest in a series of acquisitions designed to enable Global to offer a complete package of hardware and software for the pre-press markets.
