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News
DPL acquires major stake in Italian firm Dipped Products Ltd (DPL) has announced the acquisition of a controlling interest in ICO Guanti Spa of Genoa, Italy, its largest distributor in Europe, in a move that will see this world-class glove manufacturer taking a position up the value chain in the distribution of its products. The acquisition
valued at $ 855,000 (about Rs. 81 million) funded entirely from
the company's export earnings, would result in Dipped Products owning
55 percent of ICO, which holds several brands widely accepted in
Italy and in neighbouring countries like Switzerland and France,
the company said. In an announcement
to the Colombo Stock Exchange and to the company's shareholders
at the DPL annual general meeting last Wednesday, the company said
the acquisition would significantly complement its recent investment
in a medical examination gloves plant in Thailand, because ICO presently
purchases on its own account about 350 million medical examination
gloves for distribution in Italy. ICO Guanti
was established in 1968 and has been closely associated with Dipped
Products for more than 22 years. The company presently accounts
for about 15 percent of DPL sales, and has a turnover of $ 10 million
annually. "This
will enable DPL to become vigorously involved in the rapidly changing
markets of Europe. All our major competitors operate their global
marketing offices, and this investment in ICO Guanti will provide
us with a unique opportunity to take a downstream position in marketing
our gloves in Europe," a spokesman for Dipped Products said. "We believe
an investment of $ 855,000 to acquire a controlling interest in
a company that has a market share of $ 10 million in Western Europe
is cheap at the price offered. Our gross margins alone on sales
to this company are in excess of this amount." Established
in 1976 as a division of the Hayleys Group, Dipped Products pioneered
the manufacture of latex gloves for export in Sri Lanka. A public
listed company with assets of Rs. 3.8 billion and a turnover of
Rs. 3 billion, Dipped Products is today the fourth largest non-
medical glove manufacturer in the world. The company recently made an initial investment of Rs 70 million in a $ 7 million (Rs. 660 million) manufacturing facility in Thailand in order to diversify into the manufacture of medical examination gloves. Competitive
advantage through sales force automation Says Nayana
D. Serasinghe, Chief Executive Officer of EmpriseIT, "The recognition
as a Sri Lankan company that has created a powerful software such
as this with limited resources in testing is a great achievement.
It was a learning experience and also a process of technology transfer
as our engineers were at the Intel labs for weeks working with Intel
personnel." The presentation is aimed at giving local organisations an overview of the possibilities of sales force automation. iOM
realigns corporate strategy to focus on HR With over 22
years of software development and implementation experience, the
companies clientele include the Metropolitan, Abans and Hemas Group
of Companies in Sri Lanka, and foreign clients such as F & N
Coca Cola (Singapore), Kodak (USA), Mother Care (Thailand) and Whirlpool
(India). At present
iOM covers a wide range of solutions in Finance and Distribution,
Human Resources, Plant Maintenance, Balance Score Card, Executive
Information System and Retail Management System. However, the change
in corporate strategy will now see the company's concentration changing
towards their Retail Management System - Retailigence and their
Human Resource System - Hr-Pro. Retailigence
is a Retail Management System designed for a wide spectrum of retail
industries in the area of food, general merchandising, electronics,
footwear, fashion, etc. HR Pro is an integrated Internet enabled
suite of human resource planning and management applications that
works with a comprehensive HR administration system. According to
company officials, the change in corporate strategy has been devised
not just to withstand but to thrive in an increasingly competitive
global IT arena where new IT firms emerge and vanish with alarming
frequency while customers are demanding better and faster support
and after sales services. Both systems are already operational in
countries like Seychelles, Hong Kong and Sri Lanka. Clients include
names like Reebok, Tower Records and KFC. Zulficar Ghouse,
Managing Director for Sri Lanka said, "Our strategy is to focus
and achieve an unmatched level of expertise in key product categories
such as Retailigence, while offering our customers the best possible
support and service using the latest technology. Our customers will
find that these changes will bring about further enhancements to
the service levels they are already experiencing". IOM has also implemented a web-based customer support system where customers worldwide can report questions and problems over the web at any time, irrespective of their location. Once a customer problem is logged iOM's 24-hour International Support Centre is notified and moves into action, analysing and assigning a support person to the task. The customer meanwhile can monitor the progress of their problem report at any point of diagnosis over the web. End
of the road for development banks I am particularly
concerned because my father who was a parliamentarian then was involved
in the setting up of the DFCC and enacting the necessary laws. DFCC
at that time and NDB subsequently was set up to channel long-term
development assistance from the multilateral lending institutions
such as the World Bank and the International Development Association
(IDA). DFCC was very
successful and progressed fast while obtaining private sector capital
and expertise in making it a model development lender. With the
election of the J.R Jayewardene government in 1977, the whole development
outlook changed and DFCC was found inadequate resulting in the NDB
being set up through another act of parliament. Both functioned
as state sponsored institutions and performed well in bringing the
development process of the accelerated Mahaweli scheme to the periphery.
The growth of both these institutions was truly phenomenal. Even
foreign donor agencies showed an active interest in the equity participation
of these development lenders. Unfortunately
the PA government of 1994 decided to sell off the institutions.
Once the privatisation took place these institutions quite understandably
worked according to the dictates and priorities of the new owners
and shareholders which were not the long and medium term development
agendas of the country. They were more
intent on short-term profitability conveniently forgetting the original
objectives. In the past DFCC and the NDB have always given a patient
hearing to customers in difficulty and rarely resorted to auctioning
of assets but today it is different - they are notorious for parate
action against borrowers, even those in actual difficulty due to
the economic downturn. Newspapers
these days are full of auction notices inserted by these two premier
development lending institutions showing their impatience with borrowers'
difficulties. The main reason for this was that at the time of privatising
these institutions the PA government didn't keep "a golden
share" where the government would exercise its right to appoint
at least two directors on the boards of the institutions. The only saving
grace is that pioneers like my father are no longer alive to see
the good work done by the last generation of politicians being undone
by the next generation of politicians and central bankers in the
name of globalisation. |
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