The chief executive of Volvere, Jonathan Lander, knows Interactive Prospect Targeting well from providing it with seed capital in 2000 via the venture capital firm he also runs, Dawnay Day Lander. DDL owned a 25% stake which it sold down over the following years.
Thain and Eoin Ryan, the chief executive and finance director of IPT Holdings, have left IPT Holdings to join the operations acquired by Volvere, which centre on customer acquisition and list rental using promotional websites such as .
Volvere has set up a new company called Interactive Prospect Targeting Limited, which acquired the businesses from Interactive Prospect Targeting Holdings yesterday.
This has helped IPT Holdings progress its own turnaround, which will continue with it focusing on attempts to sell its remaining loss making UK businesses including Emailbureau, Tpoll and Everyinvestor and also possibly dispose of one of its healthy French businesses Directinet, NP6 and Netcollections.
Volvere's plan is to issue new shares in Interactive Prospect Targeting Limited to management and staff, diluting its current 100% holding to approximately 50%.
Lander told Brand Republic Volvere is looking at all aspects of the operations acquired, which he described as already "lean and mean" as a result of the restructurings they went through in the past year. Their turnover for the six months to the end of June 2008 was an estimated £5m.
IPT Holdings, led by executive chairman Nicholas Ward since June 20, today reported a pre-tax loss of £9.1m for the fix six months of the year, compared with a £527,000 profit a year earlier.
Its review of operations includes downbeat assessment on business conditions: "The UK data rental business, in particular, has performed well below expectations in 2008. It has faced strong competition in a demanding economic environment, including being impacted by the challenges facing the UK financial sector which constitutes a significant proportion of revenue.
"Despite overcoming the specific delivery problems experienced in 2007, the business has been affected by generally increasingly difficult email delivery environment."