Ex-Everest boss in £0.8m AIM float
Article Date: Jun 03 2005Wayne Money, former managing director of Everest Double Glazing, is close to raising £850,000 at 5p ahead of an AIM launch for security blind innovator Eruma.
Sale Sharks rugby club owner Brian Kennedy, the entrepreneur who bought control of Everest from a Money-led buyout – and could soon float Everest itself, too – will hold 20 per cent of Eruma after the float, which will value the company at £3.4 million. Eruma (an ancient Greek word for protection) is the parent company of Hoxton-based Security Blinds, which uses a device patented by inventor Brian Wilkins.
According to Money (who will own 17 per cent after the float), Wilkins' device is a steel rod inserted in the vertical blinds popular in business premises. These lock together in less than a tenth of a second in response to pressures from physical intruders, explosive blasts or vehicle ram raiding – thus impeding intruders and saving injuries by forcing shattered glass to spray outside instead of inside the premises.
HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Churchill Insurance and Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum are among users of Security Blinds, which is coy about current performance but proclaims targets of £6 million turnover and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £800,000 in two years. Offering a ten-year product guarantee, the company plans to make additional high-margin revenues from after-sales servicing and has developed a lighter, aluminium and PVC product for domestic use, to be launched in 18 months.
Money, who is understood to be discussing possible contracts for key political, administrative, financial and military buildings, wants to establish Security Blinds as a brand leader. Beaumont Cornish is nominated adviser and SP Angel broker to the float, which could catch bold punters' imaginations.
