Plasmon's european operations go bust

Plasmon, the troubled data storage company, has placed its UK and European operations into administration and has laid off some staff as the company negotiates with possible buyers. The company, many of whose customers are in the depressed financial services sector, warned in August that disappointing sales meant it would not be generating cash until 2010 and would require further funding.

In early September the company received an approach from a US private equity group, but those talks failed at the end of September, and on 6 October Plasmon appointed Kroll's Corporate Advisory and Restructuring Group as administrators.

A report in The Register estimated that about one-third of Plasmon's UK staff had been cut, with the layoffs largely coming from the software and ultra-density optical (UDO) media research teams.

In a statement, Plasmon said administrators were continuing to trade the company's UK and European sales and marketing division alongside the company's US subsidiary, Plasmon Inc., allowing the ongoing sale and support of Plasmon's products. Plasmon remains in discussions with "a number of interested parties", the company stated. Talks are understood to focus on Plasmon's core archiving business.

Plasmon's largest investor is Hanover Investment Partners, with a 26 percent stake; other investors include BT Pension Scheme Trustees and Royal Mail Pensions Trustees. Hanover, an activist fund management group, initially took a 24 percent stake in Plasmon in March with plans to help turn around the struggling business.

Plasmon's archive systems include software, disk storage and optical disk drive storage, and it has agreements with vendors such as NetApp and IBM. Indeed in a deal announced on Wednesday, Plasmon extended its relationship with IBM, initiating the joint development of an optical library providing Fibre Channel connectivity to customers of IBM's "i" platform.

(jbe)