Knowledge Technologies International (KTI)

Knowledge Technologies International was a £30m turnover company based in the UK, USA, Germany and France. KTI specialised in knowledge based engineering design software and managed services, and were an Electra Europe investment.

The company was loss making to the point where an insolvency practitioner attended board meetings.

Electra Europe appointed Michael Tait as Interim Group CEO and asked him to evaluate what could be done to save the company and determine whether some value could be recovered for investors in a sale of the company.

Electra Europe was not willing to support the company any further and on two occasions the board was advised by an insolvency practitioner, that unless funds were raised from sales, the company would have to shut the doors in a matter of days. On one of these occasions £400k had to be raised within a matter of three days to keep the company trading. Michael had to personally negotiate a deal with KTI’s biggest customer at a time when all the management and staff had declared the challenge as impossible. Mike secured a £400k deal from Airbus and the company was able to continue.

Mike had to close the larger part of the USA company, leaving just a small support group there and this enabled European activities to continue.

A successful turnaround was achieved with the company showing profits for eight months prior to Mike selling the company. Electra Europe did not want to spend M&A money and so Mike had to write the sale prospectus himself and make calls to the presidents of large international software companies to seek interest in acquiring KTI.

Mike managed to sell the company to Dassault Systeme, a large French public company, which gave a very good home for the KTI team and returned money to Electra Europe. https://www.3ds.com/newsroom/press-releases/dassault-systemes-acquires-kti Dassault Systeme: https://www.dassault.fr/
Another mention about KTI