RM Group spends £4m to get into Europe
Lego and Wi-Fi are addressed
Posted in PCs & Chips, 22nd May 2007 10:10 GMT
Free whitepaper – Avoiding costs from oversizing data center and network room infrastructure
Educational technology specialist RM Group has acquired DACTA, and with it a mainland European presence, for just shy of £4m.
DACTA, which recorded an operating profit of £570k on revenues of £6.5m in its last financial year, manages a pan-European network of resellers of branded educational resources. It is also the exclusive distributor for LEGO Education in the UK, and 16 other European countries.
The deal is target dependent: RM group is paying an initial cash sum of £2.28m, with a further £1.71m available if it meets various growth and performance targets, and DACTA's directors stay on board.
The firm will be managed as a separate entity within the RM Group with its own product development, sales & marketing, and distribution activities. RM Group will provide financial and operational support, it says.
Tim Pearson, CEO of RM, said: "DACTA is a great addition to RM's Education Resources business. It's a well-managed and profitable business, providing educational technology products that are widely and enthusiastically used by the educational ICT community."
Pearson also waded into the Wi-Fi safety debate, following a Panorama programme detailing concerns many parents and teachers have about using Wi-Fi networks in schools. With the caveat that RM takes health and safety issues very seriously, Pearson argues that the whole Wi-Fi debate boils down to an evaluation of risk:
"Everything has some risk - tragically, a 13-year-old boy tragically died earlier this year after reportedly swallowing a pen top. It seems certain to me that pens this year have killed more British schoolchildren than Wi-Fi...our own view has always been, and remains, that Wi-Fi is very unlikely to carry significant risk," he wrote.
You can read the rest of his statement here. ®
Free whitepaper – Standardization and Modularity in Network-Critical Physical Infrastructure

Enabling the Agile Data Center
Straight Talk with Dell: Sending out an SaaS
New storage architectures make SSDs more cost-effective
Dell PowerEdge R710 solution vs. Dell PowerEdge 2850 solution
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit

Vint Cerf mods Android for interplanetary interwebs
Adaptec CEO on the ropes after dreadful results
Boffins working on biodegradable flexi LED implants
Nvidia taps Transmeta team for x86 chip, claims analyst