Software Outfit Cuts Ties With Sinking Parent.

One of the few remaining divisions of troubled Woodland Hills-based El Camino Resources International is cutting ties to its parent and setting up shop on its own.

Officials at Real Software Systems Inc., a $4 million developer of software that manages companies' intellectual property, created a separate entity to buy 100 percent of the company from El Camino, which has suffered a rapid financial decline in recent months.

"We originally looked to get institutional financing or find someone to buy the company because the El Camino situation was deteriorating so fast," said David Aloisi, president and chief executive of Real Software Systems, which was founded in 1993 as part of El Camino. "But by the time we were ready to do it, the Nasdaq was in the dumper and nobody was doing any deals. We had to do something to disassociate ourselves with El Camino because we couldn't operate out of bankruptcy, if that's eventually what will happen."

El Camino, No. 341 on Forbes magazine's list of 500 fastest growing private companies in 1999, had $774 million in annual revenues that year. As recently as late last year, it had more than 1,300 employees.

But since the beginning of this year it has shed the bulk of its domestic business -- assets derived from leasing computer equipment -- as well as its IBM reseller and disaster recovery business, Real Applications. El Camino has also sold its European division and has its Latin American division up for sale.

Smaller division like Real, which employs 25, have escaped El Camino's asset selling.

Finding financing for a management buyout or acquisition is difficult in this downturn economy where bank lending is so tight, said Bobbi Dahl, partner and co-leader of the mergers and acquisitions group for the Western region of Deloitte & Touche.

Real Software found financing "overseas" from some of Aloisi's connections, but Aloisi wouldn't divulge specifics.

The company -- whose clients include MGM, IBM and BBC Worldwide of London -- creates a software that manages intellectual property rights within the high technology, publishing and entertainment industries.

The company intends to move out of 20131 Warner Center Lane, which it shares with El Camino, and into a 7,000-square-foot space at 20931 Warner Center Lane.