UK's McQueen buys Rand McNally division

UK IT company services group McQueen today announced the acquisition of US-headquartered Rand McNally Media Services Group. The buy takes McQueen past the £100m revenues mark and staff to over 1,000. No redundancies are planned.

The enlarged company will trade under the McQueen name and continue to be based in Galashiels, Scotland. McQueen is one of the unsung success stories of UK IT, dealing in the little known waters of software manufacturing, localisation, direct marketing and technical support. Customers include Microsoft, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Adobe and Netscape.

Rand McNally Media Services Group offers a similar product set to McQueen plus Internet commerce through offices in Nashville, Tennessee; Fremont, California; Shannon, Ireland and strategic relationships Asia Pacific.

"The integration of the Media Services Group business within the McQueen portfolio is just the latest stage in our strategy for growth that has been driven by the company's desire to expand its activities in new markets," said Michael Gray, McQueen chairman and chief executive. "In the future, there is further potential for diversification in areas such as finance and 'edutainment' support."

"We wanted to do what we do on a global basis and it made sense given that 95 per cent of our customers are US-headquartered," said Tom Hart, group operations director. "The rise of our company shows that the outsourcing phenomenon has no sign of stopping."

McQueen can be contacted by telephone on 0131-225 7979.