Take-over by NZSB finally approved

Press, 6 September 1983, Page 21

Take-over by NZSB finally approved

By

SIMON COLLINS,

“N.Z. Herald”

The Australian Foreign Investment Review Board has approved the take-over of an Australian computer programming firm by the New Zealand South British insurance group.

The deal, worth under $2 million, was approved after a delay of more than two months, just before the arrival in Canberra of the New Zealand Prime Minister, Mr Muldoon, for the South Pacific Forum.

Officially, New Zealand South British says its takeover of the Sydney-based firm, Manufacturing Commercial Systems, (MACS), was treated like any other by the Australian authori-

ties. Unofficially, other sources believe the deal was deliberately snagged for political reasons.

MACS is the third computer company taken over so far this year by NZSB’s new information services division, which aims to boost its revenues from $2O million last year to $lOO

million within five years. The other two were a leading New Zealand microcomputer programming house, Interactive Applications, Ltd, and the Brisbanebased computer manufacturer, David Hartley.

Negotiations are now taking place with yet another Australian company, although these have not yet reached the stage of an application to the Foreign Investment Review Board.

Mr David Medd, formerly manager of the Wellington office of the NZSB subsidiary, IDAPS Computer Science (NZ), Ltd, has been appointed MACS’s new managing director, and several other New Zealanders will

join him in Sydney. MACS founder, Mr Justin Macintosh, has become its sales director.

No figure for MACS revenue or capital has been released, but it is said to be projecting reserves over the next year in excess of SA6 million (SNZB.I6 million). Its programs cover production and materials control, warehousing and distribution control and accounting, and operate on Data General computers. In New Zealand, where MACS was formerly represented by IDAPS, a separate MACS subsidiary is now being formed as part of NZSB’s policy of “entrepreneurial units.”