By Ron Coates, 27 April 2004 09:50
NEWS US analytical-software firm Fair Isaac has made an agreed £166m offer for former high-flyer London Bridge Software.
It is the second sale of a UK software company to the US in the past week. Last week Tibco bought UK vendor Staffware in an agreed £123m deal.
UK company founder Gordon Crawford will get £76m from the sale and stay on for a year as a consultant. He was once rated the 12th richest person in the UK when the dot-com boom valued London Bridge at £2.5bn.
The sale will also trigger £3.8m of share options for staff from secretaries to board level. London Bridge, which specialises in debt-collection and credit-management software, promised to pay its proposed dividend of 7p per share.
The two companies have no overlap of products. London Bridge had been motoring back into profitability with pre-tax profits for the year to December of £4.1m. In 2002 the company suffered heavy losses and had to lay off staff.
The two executive directors, CEO Jon Lee and CFO Gordon Stuart, will stay with the company.
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