MMT Computing Plc, the UK-based software and consulting company, is now looking for a big expansion in US sales to provide a new generator of growth. With revenues up 48.9% to 36.3m pounds and income growing 75% to 6.1m pounds in the year to August 31, the company has not found growth opportunities difficult in its UK base. But early next year, it plans to open a Chicago office to push its software into the utilities and financial markets. With the UK ahead of the rest of the world in liberalization of electricity supply markets, the company’s Wiggins subsidiary has already signed up the first US power company for its software which calculates costs of supplying the grid. It hopes to have at least five of the 200 US power companies as customers within the first year. The reason for a Chicago location for operations however is that its Cortex subsidiary specializes in derivative trading systems. Here the company reckons it will benefit from the ill-feeling generated when financial software house Sungard Data Systems Inc was forced to abandon its bid for Rolfe and Nolan Plc after a deluge of complaints from clients about monopolistic behavior (CI No 3,384). Worries about the market being sewn up by a major supplier has already led to approaches to Cortex, MMT’s subsidiary, which hopes to cash in on a bias towards alternative suppliers.
