City Briefs: Provident Financial, WANDisco and OptiBiotix
Sub-prime lender, Provident Financial has appointed a new managing director of its Consumer Credit Division (CCD), subject to regulatory approval.
Hamish Paton joins the Bradford-headquartered business on 14 September to take over from Chris Gillespie, who is leaving to join H&T Group plc, a FTSE listed pawnbroker.
Paton has a strong consumer finance background and excellent sector knowledge, having served as CEO of Amigo Holdings plc (‘Amigo’) from July 2019 until his resignation in December 2019, and prior to this as CEO of BrightHouse, from 2016 to 2019.
Malcolm Le May, chief executive officer of Provident Financial, said: “I would like to thank Chris Gillespie for all that he has done within CCD since he took over in 2017. Chris joined at a very difficult time for the business and has done a remarkable job in turning around its operations. The successful roll out of Provident Direct under his leadership, for example, has allowed us to carry on serving our customers during the Covid-19 crisis.
“I look forward to welcoming Hamish Paton when he joins Provident Financial. His extensive sector experience, and existing knowledge of our customer base, make him the ideal person to continue the work needed to get CCD back to a position of strength and profitability.”
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Listed software company, WANDisco has signed an initial deal worth up to $1m with a major British supermarket, which TheBusinessDesk.com understand is Tesco.
With the completion of the deal, the Sheffield-based firm’s technology will be used on-premise for data consistency and then subsequently for migration to the Azure cloud.
WANdisco CEO and Chairman David Richards, said: “This deal with one of the UK’s largest supermarkets reflects trends across the global retail industry to harness the power of big data and analytics through the cloud. With the backdrop of COVID-19, retailers are fast tracking their cloud journeys as digital and physical commerce become ever more intertwined. Our momentum registering new customers for our embedded product, with eleven signing in the first month of operation, provides further confidence in our partner led strategy.”
Alongside this deal, the business seen strong uptake for the its Azure Cloud product, with 11 companies registered in the first month of public preview, which is in line with the firm’s expectation to sign 50 new customers within the first 12 months of operation.
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ProBiotix Health- a whole owned subsidiary of York-based life sciences businesses, OptiBiotix Health – has has entered into a new distribution agreement with Actial Farmaceutica Srl for the distribution of its cholesterol and blood pressure reducing dietary supplements in four new territories in the Asia Pacific region.
The agreement grants Actial – an Italian holding company, the right to distribute ProBiotix’s cholesterol and blood pressure reducing dietary supplements, CholBiome® and CholBiome®X3 in Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and Thailand.
Mikkel Hvid-Hansen, Commercial Director of ProBiotix Health Ltd: “We are pleased to announce the signing of this distribution agreement with Actial Farmaceutica Srl as we believe cholesterol reducing probiotics like LPLDL® are increasingly being seen by clinicians and health care professionals as a naturally safe and effective approach to reducing cardiovascular risk. We chose Actial due to a common interest in developing probiotics with strong science and clinical studies and their expertise in commercialising value added probiotics to major global pharmaceutical markets.
“We believe working with Actial, and similar partners around the world, provides the best opportunity to expand the range of applications for LP LDL® and CholBiome® to a wide range of industry sectors. This agreement is another step in our low cost approach to growing revenues by building manufacturing, formulation/application and distribution partnerships which provide revenues across the whole value chain in multiple industry sectors.”
