Company News in Brief

Booker, the food distribution and agri-business, has sold the Plenty companies, which specialise in the design and manufacturing of fluid- handling products and process equipment, to EIS, an engineering company, for pounds 11.2m. The sale includes the UK-based Plenty and Oil Plus, and Plenty Products of Houston in the US. Inter-group loans of pounds 1.1m have been repaid and Booker has also received a pre-sale dividend amounting to pounds 2.4m.

Thornton Pan-European IT intends to raise about pounds 3m by means of a placing of zero dividend preference shares at 50p each. Thornton also plans to extend the life of the company by eight years to 31 October 2001.