This article is more than 1 year old

Pentos Systems goes titsup

HP and Microsoft minnow calls in the administrators

UPDATED Hampshire-based reseller Pentos Systems has given up the ghost and called in the administrators after nearly 20 years in business.

The HP Gold partner, which held a specialisation in workstations, is now in the hands of corporate recovery and insolvency practitioner Irwin Insolvency.

Gerald Irwin is the administrator and John Pearson is handling the case but neither returned calls to The Reg.

At its peak Pentos was turning over £5m a year and was profitable but in recent years the financials took a turn for the worse and by the end of March 2011 sales were £2.5m and operating profit was £40,000.

Channel sources in the credit sector claimed the company suffered from a "slowdown in activity and a lack of liquidity".

Channel insolvency soared last year and remained at a nine-year in Q1, with SME dealers and independent retailers typically the types of businesses falling by the wayside.

The firm boasts on its site of testimonials from high profile customers in car manufacturing and motor racing including Aston Martin, Renault and the Honda F1 team.

Pentos was also a Microsoft Gold partner, a Lenovo business partner and a member of Dell's Partner Direct.

Repeated calls to the reseller's premises in Basingstoke were not answered.

UPDATED Administrator Gerald Irwin has since been in touch to say Pentos is continuing to trade with a skeleton staff of three heads as a buyer is sought for the maintenance contracts.

He said Pentos was hit by declining trade and management were trying to reduce costs to match those conditions but claimed a winding up order from a creditor "drew a line under the business going forward".

The winding up order was issued by Micro Peripherals on 27 March but as Pentos has gone into administration, the petition has been scratched.

Irwin confirmed that 14 staff had been made redundant.®

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