A former Keighley businessman who now part-owns an American e-commerce company is recruiting staff from West Yorkshire.

Robert Kearney and business partner David Richards have become frustrated by rising wage demands and a lack of suitable applicants in California's Silicon Valley. They are now going back to their roots in the search for computer experts.

David says the business-to-business software development company B2B-ERP.com was hopeful it would be able to expand its workforce from 20 to 50 by the end of the year.

He says: "People may laugh at us launching a search for new staff more than 6,000 miles away from our base.

"But we are confident the right candidates will get in touch with us."

David, who studied at Hudders-field University with Robert, says many of the Silicon Valley companies have recruited talent from the Indian sub-continent, but even their wage demands are higher than those of British computer experts.

Robert, 29, says: "The software we are working on has been used by organisations like the Yorkshire Building Society and Inland Revenue, so the talent is definitely out there." Robert, who has a degree in business computing, is responsible for all aspects of product technology, development, and delivery.

He has extensive experience of large-scale software engineering.

Before joining B2B-ERP, he held technical management positions and provided consultancy to various blue chip companies such as Exxon, Hewlett-Packard, Philip Morris, Polaroid, Siemens Nixdorf, Price waterhouseCoopers, Deloitte Touche and Rolls-Royce.

Anyone interested in more information about the firm can visit its web site at www.b2b-erp.com

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.