It is now claiming to be the largest European-owned information and communications technology (ICT) services company in the world with combined annual revenues of  €3 billion and 29,000 employees.   The deal has doubled the size of the UK operation.  

However around 4% of the employees are expected to lose their jobs as the company seeks to reduce costs.  Stuart Appleton, chairman of Getronics UK & Ireland, said that following the merger there was some duplication of job functions that would be eliminated.   He added: ‘These will be in the back office functions such as human resources.  There will be no redundancies in customer facing positions.’   Getronics runs one of the UK's largest IT field engineering forces and has computer giant Dell as its biggest customer.

Appleton said the Getronics head office in Putney, west London was likely to close when its lease ran out this year and the headquarters would move to the Pink Roccade base in Farnborough, Surrey.   This move reflects something of a Pink Roccade coup in the takeover although the name remains Getronics.  While Appleton is from Getronics, he joined the company in 2002 after it got into its current financial and market troubles.  However in the UK the former head and veteran Roger Whitehead has left the company.  His job and the direct responsibility for sales and marketing has gone to Clive Hyland the new chief operating officer for UK and Ireland.  Hyland was formerly the chief executive of Pink Roccade in the UK. 

He said the company was in great shape to take on the established players such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and EDS ‘with no obvious gap in the portfolio from consultancy to the data centre and down to the desk top’.  But he acknowledged that the company had to build its reputation in the field.   ‘IT directors don’t like to take risks with their partners and all too often going with one of the big vendors is the safe option.  We need to convince them we now have the global scale and are a global player,’ he said.

Both he acknowledged that while the former Getronics organisation had excellent technical skills, its sales and marketing abilities had been lacking.   Hyland said Pink Roccade had an aggressive sales history but had probably got as far as it was going to.   ‘We need to take some of the volatility out of sales and be more consistent,’ he said.  Appleton said:  ‘We have to sales and marketing lead’

Appleton said he expected the cost cutting to save up to €40 million a year. He added that market conditions were tough and that the company would have to grow at 5-6% just to stay still against the competition.  He is however ambitious for the company and said growth would be both organic and achieved through more acquisitions.  ‘We want to be a top 10 global player with three to five years’ he said.