PERTH multimedia firm Imago has been sold for the second time in six months for an undisclosed sum.
PERTH multimedia firm Imago has been sold for the second time in six months for an undisclosed sum.
This most recent sale of Imago, which was effective on April 30 this year, follows its purchase in October last year by Virtual Control Systems (VCS), a formerly wholly-owned subsidiary of WA company Amadeus Energy.
The new owners are husband and wife team William Paul and Katerina Andronis who are joined by Marjolein Towler as joint director.
WA Business News spoke to Mr Paul who said Imago plans to move in to the realm of documentary and film making as well as expanding the current aspects of the business.
Mr Paul said both he and Ms Andronis, a member of Women Chiefs of Enterprises International, come from a background in IT and business process change consulting and the acquisition was a case of “putting our money where our mouth is”.
“Rather than consulting for other people and telling them what to do, which we’ve been doing a great deal of, it is following our passion which we’ve realised in recent years is film making,” he said.
Mr Paul said it was this interest in film making which attracted them to look further into the deal.
“Our acquisition came about because we were beginning to get excited about our prospects in film making and it was one of those wonderful opportunities where you are chatting about something and it all comes together,” he said.
“[Imago] is a good post-production platform for film making and would take us to a place where we would otherwise hope to be in two or three years in terms of infrastructure. So it was ideal.”
Amadeus Energy executive director and company secretary Caroline Bentley said the reason for the sale by Amadeus Energy was a refocus on core business.
This was a fortunate turn of events for the new owners who said they became aware of the impending sale of Imago from Amadeus Energy chairman Robert Scott.
Ms Bentley also said that there was no loss of funds during the short period that VCS owned Imago and that the sale involved “a handful of interested parties”.
When asked about the long-term direction of the company, Mr Paul said it was too early to tell.
“It’s only been two weeks [since the acquisition] so we will be talking to organisations about large scale opportunities,” he said. “The focus of Imago currently is in museum, public attraction and corporate videos and there are a number of reasonable prospects there.”
Mr Paul said that while there are some good prospects for substantial and expanded work in WA, the company would also look interstate for opportunities. “There’s more business interstate and we’ll be looking into that, but the near-term opportunities are in education content for tertiary institutions and for corporations in the mining and construction sector.”
Mr Paul said a restructuring of the company would facilitate this. “We have working capital that should see us through our initial few months and we will then be funded from commercial activity.”
As WA Business News reported in August last year, Imago’s board hired an external business consultant Andrew Parkinson to handle the sale or division of the company and the directors received at least six offers from undisclosed parties interested in buying the business.
At the time it was not certain if the bids were for the business as a going concern, or some or all of its assets, which then included a 40 per cent stake in technology incubator Entrepreneurs in Residence (EiR).
Amadeus Energy acquired Imago on October 25, 2002 for an un-disclosed sum.
VCS was a 100 per cent subsidiary initiative between Amadeus Energy and Honeywell with a focus on control room technology.
Imago was originally incorporated in 1995 as Westmedia Ltd, but changed its name when it submitted a proposal to the Federal Government for funding under the Cooperative Multimedia Centre (CMC) program. It was one of six CMCs established in Australian capital cities in 1995-96 and was supported until 2002 by $1.375 million pa in funding.
In addition, each CMC was expected to generate revenue from the provision of products and services — and ultimately become self-sufficient.
Imago’s role was to be an agent through which companies and people in the multimedia industry would come together to develop the industry in Perth.
As WA Business News reported in August, Imago was originally set up and funded by more than $4 million from Edith Cowan, Murdoch and Curtin Universities, which between them held 491,627 ‘A-class’ shares and a further $816,000 from three technology firms which owned 100 ‘B-class’ shares.
Imago also had a 40 per cent stake in technology incubator Entrepreneurs in Residence (EiR) which was later sold by Amadeus Energy.
