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SCMP Reporter

Software consultancy james martin & co relaunched and rebranded itself yesterday after receiving a private placement of US$191 million in financing.

The privately held company has been renamed Headstrong.

An investment of US$173 million will give chief investor Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe a controlling share while H&Q Asia has invested US$18 million. The company plans to use the capital for expansion and acquisition.

According to Headstrong Asia-Pacific chief operating officer Kevin Taylor, the firm will begin acquisitions in the region this month.

'We've got a strategy which is to only acquire certain components and leadership talent into our business and not major investment, just minor investments,' Mr Taylor said.

'I'm actually going to make an acquisition here in Asia-Pacific within the next two weeks.'

He said the target acquisition is publicly listed and operates in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

Headstrong has been redesigning its entire business operation since last year when it announced its Digital Business Models - a collection of concepts and technologies that can be combined in different ways to suit each client.

Among Headstrong's Asian clients are Jardine Fleming, Dairy Farm International Holdings and the MTRC, for whom the firm developed the software for the Octopus card.

Of the company's 1,000 staff, nearly 700 are based in Asia, with 300 in the Philippines.

'Our software factory in Manila is absolutely critical, and that's been re-equipped with the new tools so that we can build Web-centric applications very fast there,' founder James Martin said.

'Eighteen months ago, we set out to completely transform the entire corporation and reinvent the entire corporation.

'And so it was our long-term goal to invent a new corporation that was totally in tune with the present time, what happens after the dotcom crash.'

Although james martin & co loudly predicted the death of the dotcom boom a year ago, Headstrong nonetheless describes itself as an e-solutions company.

'The bubble's burst [but] the digital economy, or the e-economy, has got tremendous opportunities for the future,' Mr Taylor said.

'It was because we'd designed the company to be post dotcom . . . that enabled us to raise the largest amount of money that's been raised in recent times for an Internet services company.'

Headstrong will remain privately held for the foreseeable future, but Mr Martin said an initial public offering was now a stronger likelihood than previously.



Firm Headstrong after placement