Mission in Management Buyout By Paul Messenger January 23, 2000 — It's been no secret that leading British speaker brand Mission was up for sale—the situation had been spelled out last fall in the Annual Report of parent company NXT plc. NXT is busy pioneering its new flat-panel speaker technology, and shareholder interests were clearly not being well served by "carrying" for any length of time a box-speaker brand whose recent financial reports had been mostly in the red.

Mission has since moved back into profit, and a number of rumors about its likely future ownership circulated toward the end of 1999. On January 19, 2000 the situation was resolved with the news that a management buyout deal had been agreed (subject to shareholder approval). Mission will now be an independent entity again, headed by the key three directors from its previous existence: D.C. Barkataki (managing and finance), Dave Marchant (sales), and Paul Swepstone (operations)—a team with over 40 years' collective experience within the company.