Online learning firm Futuremedia is preparing to torpedo a bid by London publishing group Huveaux for its Brighton counterparts Epic Group.

The Nile Street company is considering making a cash offer for e-learning specialists Epic whose headquarters are in Old Steine, a short distance away.

Huveaux's bid is worth £22.7 million through a cash and share deal of one Huveaux share and 35p cash for each Epic share, which are valued at 95.5p.

The revision-guide and political reference book specialist remains the favourite to get its quarry until Futuremedia has made a formal bid for Epic.

So far Futuremedia has given no indication of how much it would be prepared to pay for Epic.

Chief executive Leonard Fertig said: "Epic is the UK's leading e-learning studio, based only hundreds of yards away from Futuremedia in Brighton.

" We believe the combined company would be a market leader with outstanding growth prospects.

"I can't say yet when an offer will be made but we are working on the case because on an intuitive level at least it just seems to make sense.

"We are involved in two different parts of e-learning so the companies would complement each other perfectly and we are both Brighton-based businesses."

The Epic board said it looked forward to clarifying the exact timing, details and conditions of any proposed offer from Futuremedia.

But as there could be no certainty the approach would lead to an offer for Epic it would continue to recommend Huveaux's bid.

A tie-up between Futuremedia and Epic would create a strong market leader and boost Brighton and Hove's bid to become the European capital of e-learning.

The city already accounts for ten per cent of the UK e-learning market - roughly the same as London - and there is a desire to increase its share of the spoils.

Epic, whose list of clients has grown significantly in the past year, was approached by Huveaux shortly after announcing a 53 per cent jump in annual profits.

The company increased turnover by 11 per cent to £8.1 million for the year to May 31 while pre-tax profits increased to £2.09 million from £1.36 million.

Meanwhile Futuremedia underlined its intentions of expanding into Europe in November last year when it bought Swedish counterpart Open Training in a deal worth about £1million.

The acquisition gave Futuremedia a strong foothold in Scandinavia, second largest provider of online or web-based training in Europe.

It also opened up the Scandinavian market to Futuremedia's award-winning home computing package Learning For All, which has helped train 200,000 Royal Mail staff.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005