LOCAL entrepreneur Phill McGowan has bought a majority stake in a London-based website and multi-media training developer.

The deal involves TD Multimedia which creates bespoke commercial websites and training software for companies and is embarking on a dramatic expansion programme.

"We expect turnover and profits to double by the end of the year,'' said Mr McGowan who sold Applied Technology Services earlier this year.

"Since announcing the buy-in and investment programme the company has received new orders worth more than £60,000 and there is a good deal of interest from customers as far away as America.''

Mr McGowan said he wanted to invest in TD Multimedia because of its excellent management team and high level of skills in the creative and technical departments.

"I can see they are more than capable of making it an even greater success,'' he said.

To cope with expansion the company has just moved into larger premises and plans to open new offices in Eastleigh within a year.

Mr McGowan is not new to the world of IT. In the last six years he has successfully started four companies from scratch, built them into profitable successful organisations and then enabled the management teams to buy a controlling interest.

"The type of person who can think up a new idea, launch a product or service into the market and make it profitable is not always the right one to run the company in the long term,'' he said.

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