Gamble of the week: resurgent Scottish IT firm

This Scottish IT firm struggled during the credit crunch. But after four years of restructuring, the business is back on its feet, says Paul Hill.

During their heyday back in 2007, shares in Maxima, the Scottish IT firm, reached a high-water mark of 329p. Its customers included big names such as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Balfour Beatty, Caledonian and Orange, after it blazed a fast-paced trail of 11 acquisitions. But the board didn't anticipate the credit crunch, which cut off a vital source of funding at a time when corporate clients were also tightening their belts.

Four years on, after a string of disposals and the departure of the CEO and chairman, Maxima seems to be back on its feet. Today, its bread-and-butter business is based on delivering and managing services including cloud computing, hosting, software applications, data centres and networks management.

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Paul gained a degree in electrical engineering and went on to qualify as a chartered management accountant. He has extensive corporate finance and investment experience and is a member of the Securities Institute.

Over the past 16 years Paul has held top-level financial management and M&A roles for blue-chip companies such as O2, GKN and Unilever. He is now director of his own capital investment and consultancy firm, PMH Capital Limited.

Paul is an expert at analysing companies in new, fast-growing markets, and is an extremely shrewd stock-picker.