Workers Net Pounds 75,000 Apiece in Telco Coup

MORE than 100 call centre workers and telephone engineers will get windfalls averaging Pounds 75,000 after their north London telecoms firm was sold.

Telco Holdings is being bought by British Gas owner Centrica for Pounds 43m in cash.

Chairman and chief executive Dr Asher Gratt takes the lion’s share of Pounds 30m.

He owns 70pc of the Enfield company through a series of trusts. Staff share Pounds 8m and a silent partner picks up the remaining Pounds 4m.

Gratt, who would not comment, has read the fall and rise of the telecoms sector spectacularly well.

He founded Telco in 1996 and sold the company two years later, only to buy it back out of administration for a token Pounds 1 in 2001 after the technology bubble burst.

The 50-year-old has set up a series of telecoms companies and dabbles in property development. He holds a PhD in business management from Washington International University. One associate said: ‘He is not at all flashy. He doesn’t have any Ferraris or anything.’

Telco is the latest phone and internet provider to sell out as competition for customersintensifies and the bigger players bulk up. The company made a Pounds 4.8m pretax profit last year on sales of Pounds 232m.

It has 238,000 residential customers, several thousand business accounts and sells international phone cards.

The purchase of Telco looks like an about-turn for Centrica, up 11/4p to 2443/4p.

Its telecoms arm barely breaks even and analysts say the division was privately touted for sale last year.

After the disposal of Goldfish credit cards and the AA, chief executive Sir Roy Gardner is refocusing the company around energy and electricity supply.

But his purchase of Telco indicates that he will persevere with telecoms now that regulator Ofcom has made it easier to compete with BT.