October 1983
Marconi buys Quest CAE Assets

Article from Electronics & Power - October 1983 St. Albans-based Marconi Instruments has purchased the major part of the assets of Quest CAE from the receiver. In a recent statement, Colin Gaskell, managing director of Marconi Instruments, said his company had paid 'several millions' for the assets, which included considerable amounts of equipment, a substantial order book and property rights to Quest CAE designs. He also said that Marconi would be injecting a further £1-1-5 million of working capital into the new company, known as Marconi Quest CAE, which he expected to be trading profitably in its first year. Mr. Gaskell said that Marconi Instruments was already the largest automatic test equipment company in Europe and that there was a large amount of commonality between the hardware and software elements of the current and future ATE product development programmes of both Marconi Instruments and Quest CAE. For some years the two companies had worked together, with Marconi using about 16 of Quest's systems in its factories. The two companies, he said, had the same strategic and market-oriented aims, and the businesses would fit well together. Quest CAE operated from Ferndown in' Dorset, and until its recent financial troubles, had a turnover of some £10 million per annum. It specialised in the design and manufacture of CADCAM systems, with applications ranging from PCB design, mechanical, civil and structural engineering. The new Marconi Quest CAE will be based at the same premises and has made offers of employment to virtually all the 230 former staff, most of whom are expected to continue working there.