Coe chief Wallace goes as it secures loan

STRUGGLING video surveillance company Coe Group is to part company with chief executive Andrew Wallace as it bids to cut costs.

He will be replaced, after four years at the helm, by  finance director Ian Jefferson, while sales director Mark Norton, one of the first salesmen for computer group Compaq in the UK who became sales director, has joined the board.

Last month the Leeds-based company, which supplies its products to monitor traffic on London’s roads, asked for its shares to be suspended on AIM ahead of an announcement about new financing.

Now the group says it has secured a short-term loan of £350,000 repayable in six months from IP2IPO, part of IP Group, the stock market quoted backer of university spin-outs which owns 32% of its shares.

Coe said it would have to look to additional medium-term funding, once the loan, which has a 7% annual interest rate for the first six months and then will increase, is repaid.

The said that turnover for the year to June 30 rose slightly to just over £4m.

The group supplies surveillance equipment for the Martignano Tunnel in Italy, the Port of Singapore and rail systems in Holland, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The group has high-profile contracts with Transport for London for bus lane and congestion charge enforcement in the capital as well as supplying CCTV systems to 35 towns and cities in the UK including Leeds and Bradford.

International contracts include Randstad Rail in Holland and with Siemens for the Kowloon Canton Railway in Hong Kong as well as for underground rail systems around the globe.