LONDON (SHARECAST) - Engineering software group Aveva has announced the acquisition of Z+F UK, a UK software company which develops and markets laser scanning software for £6.3m.
The company, a subsidiary of German outfit Z+F GmbH, will be acquired on a debt free/cash free basis, which has been satisfied from the company's existing cash resources.
As part of the acquisition Z+F GmbH has also been granted a licence to continue to distribute the Z+F UK software together with Z+F GmbH's laser scanning hardware products. This initial licence has been granted free of royalty up to the value of the first £1 million of royalties over the next 5 years.
Aveva said: "The acquisition brings a versatile software portfolio for the management of laser scanned data together with a team of people with significant domain experience in the laser scanning market."
If Aveva's chief executive, Richard Congdon, is to be believed, however, then the chances of retaining the recently acquired UK personnel of Z+F are slim. According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, Congdon has called on the government to scrap the top rate of tax, currently set at 50p for earnings greater than £150,000 a year.
It is believed that the top rate affects around 300,000 high-earners in the UK. It is not known how many of those are programmers or software engineers.
Congdon claims in one breath that many overseas employees are refusing to come to work in the UK because of the high tax rate and then in the next calls on the UK to lift the cap on immigration to Britain to make it easier for the flood of talent desperate to come and work in Britain, and contribute to the Exchequer's tax revenue.
Congdon said he would consider moving the company to Hong Kong if conditions do not improve, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
Shares of Aveva were down 29p to 1,378p in early trading on Monday.
LONDON (SHARECAST) - Engineering software group Aveva has announced the acquisition of Z+F UK, a UK software company which develops and markets laser scanning software for £6.3m.
