Mortgage Brain and Trigold kiss goodbye
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Mortgage Brain and TrigoldCrystal say the decision to terminate their merger plans was mutual following the Office of Fair Trading ruling.
Mortgage Brain revealed last December that it was in discussions with the board of TrigoldCrystal and had agreed terms to buy the business for £6.8m.
But the OFT recently announced that it has referred the proposed acquisition to the Competition Commission as it was con-cerned that the merger would lead to Mortgage Brain being too dominant.
Mark Lofthouse, chief executive officer of Mort-gage Brain, says the firm doesn’t feel it is in the best interests of all those in-volved to progress.
He says: “Referral cases like these are designed for large companies and we feel our time and resources will be better served by continuing to invest in delivering the best products and services to brokers.”
Lofthouse says he cannot reveal user numbers but last year Mort-gage Brain increased its market share across major products and overall user numbers and usage also went up.
Last September Mortgage Intelli-gence ditched TrigoldCrystal’s point-of-sale system and moved in January this year to Mortgage Brain’s The Key. It also switched to the All New Mortgage Brain as its preferred sourcing system.
TrigoldCrystal’s sourcing system has 16,500 users, down from 23,000 in 2008 and 19,000 in 2009.
Last week TrigoldCrystal revealed that its earnings before interest and taxes were £1.2m in 2010, but it has not yet revealed its overall pre-tax profit.
It also says that recurring revenues are running at 90% and net debt is expected to be satisfied in Q2, down from a peak of £6m in 2004. TrigoldCrystal says it will be accelerating its investment prog-ramme for its Prospector Platform and plans to include buy-to-let functionality on the system.
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