Companies

Coolabi

Overview

Coolabi is an intellectual property development company. Its main character is Purple Ronnie but it is developing a portfolio of TV and non-TV characters. In April 2007, Coolabi acquired Purple Enterprises, the company owned by Purple Ronnie creator Giles Andreae, for an initial £3.3m plus £600,000 for the cash in the company. There was also an earn-out of up to £1.5m. A share placing at the equivalent of 30p a share – there was a 20-for-one consolidation in November 2007 – raised £4.8m net to finance the acquisition. Chairman William Harris used to run Gullane Entertainment, the owner of Thomas the Tank Engine, prior to its takeover by HIT Entertainment in 2002. He brought chief executive Jeremy Banks on board in September 2006 and another ex-Gullane director, Tim Ricketts, became finance director in February 2007. Banks was commercial and finance director at Chorion between 2001 and 2006. Chorion, which owned the rights to Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton's characters among others, was itself quite a lowly rated business for much of its time on AIM. It was eventually acquired by 3i-backed Planet Acquisitions for £112m.

Sector: Media

News blog

Browse by issue
All issues
Popular tags
All tags

betbrokers, financial, gold, health, leisure, media, mobile, resources, services, technology

AIM Micro feeds

Keep up to date with articles published at AIMMicro.com. Subscribe to AIM Micro RSS Feeds