December 9, 2007 - Sunday Business Post

Financial services security software provider Norkom Technologies has secured €4 million funding from Enterprise Ireland’s (EI) scaling unit. The investment will allow Norkom to create 111 new jobs, 70 in research and development, and all based in Dublin.

Norkom supplies software to companies operating in the global financial services sector. Its solutions promise to enable customers to prevent money laundering, terrorist financing and fraud. EI will pay the total €4 million funding amount to Norkom in instalments over three years, Norkom finance director Liam Davis said that the funding would enable Norkom to scale up its business on a global level.

‘‘Enterprise Ireland are helping us to accelerate towards a leadership position in the financial crime solution marketplace,” Davis said. ‘The investment in research and development is about getting new products to market and integrating companies that we acquire.”

Initial discussions regarding the €4 million investment took place in June, Davis said. ‘‘We did a lot of work with them for three months and submitted a plan of the different projects we would bring in over that time. It got EI investment committee approval two months ago, then it had to go through the EI board and cabinet for final approval.”

Davis said that the process was relatively straightforward. ‘‘Enterprise Ireland’s standard process is a combination of commercial and technical due diligence. It is a very company- friendly approach, very light on form filling and more around direct meetings. They also spent time talking to our clients in Europe, Asia and North America.”

Norkom chief executive Paul Kerley founded the company in 1998 with chief technical officer Kilian Colleran and chief commercial officer Liam Griffin. Cecil Hayes, who is also chairman of Vivas Health, has since joined the company as chief operations officer.

Originally, Norkom produced customer-relationship management (CRM) solutions. It moved into anti-money laundering and financial crime solutions in 2001.

‘‘A European recession ate into our market by 20 per cent,” Davis said.” We took the technology and looked at behavior and transactions from a more regulatory point of view.”

Norkom floated on the Alternative Investment Market in London and IEX in Dublin in June 2006, enabling it to pursue an acquisitive strategy.

‘‘We wanted to develop a set of institutions who could be investors in the business, and who would be amenable to the idea of Norkom becoming a global leader,” said Davis.” While the infrastructure was there to grow by 50 per cent each year, we still need acquisitions also.”

Norkom acquired US competitor Digital Harbour earlier this year for $36.5 million.

‘‘The North American market makes up 55 to 60 per cent of global demand and Digital Harbour had a large North American presence with three or four key blue-chip bank customers,” said Davis.

Last year, Norkom turned over €25 million, with a profit of €4.5million. It employs 295 staff in its global headquarters in Dublin and offices in Boston, Washington, Salt Lake City, Brussels, Sydney and Melbourne.

<< Back To Media Coverage