Acquisition News: 25/1/10

INDIA EQUITY PARTNERS TO BUY 25% IN IETS FOR RS 140 CRORE
Arun Kumar, New Delhi, January 25, 2010
The Economic Times

New York-based India Equity Partners is set to acquire a 25% stake in IL&FS Education and Technology Services (IETS) for little over Rs 140 crore.

IETS is an education and cluster development initiative of Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Service (IL&FS). Two officials, involved in the deal, said on the condition of anonymity, the private equity firm would pick up nearly 20% in secondary sale by the three existing partners and 5% will be acquired through fresh issue of shares by IETS.

Orix Corporation of Japan, HDFC and Sera Fund are divesting their entire stake in favour of India Equity Partners, said a senior executive.

The current paid-up capital of IETS is Rs 32.31 crore, comprises of 3.23 crore equity shares of each. A senior executive involved in the deal said on the condition of anonymity India Equity Partners was picking up stake at Rs 175 per share resulting into a total valuation of Rs 560 crore.

Both the company is expected to make the announcement shortly, said a senior executive. The education sector is going to be very exciting in India, said head of a private equity, who has also explored the possibility of investing into the company. “Given the growth rate and huge opportunities, the sector would witness a large numbers of mid-size transactions,” he added.

Sid Khanna, chairman and managing director of India Equity Partners, refused to comment. Despite several attempt, IL&FS chairman and managing director Ravi Parthasarthy could not be reached.

 

EXCISE DUTY HIKE LIKELY FOR ALL, CENVAT MAY GO UP 2%
Surabhi, New Delhi, January 25, 2010
The Economic Times

The government is considering an across-the-board increase in excise duty in the Union budget 2010-11, as it faces pressure to withdraw fiscal stimulus measures in the wake of a 16-year high fiscal deficit of 6.8% in the current financial year.

“One option being considered is an increase in cenvat rate by 2% while leaving the service tax rate unchanged at 10%,” a finance ministry official told ET. Cenvat refers to the median excise duty, tax on manufacture of goods, levied on nearly 90% of the goods made in the country.

More services could be brought under the tax net to allow the government to keep service tax rates unchanged, the official said, requesting anonymity. A hike in service tax rate would be an immediate burden on consumers already battling high food prices. The proposal is at an early stage and may undergo significant changes by the time the budget is presented.

An alternate proposal is also under consideration, which moots an increase in excise rates in sectors that are doing well such as automobiles, instead of an across-the-board hike.

The economy is recovering from an economic downturn induced by a global recession, which forced the government to cut taxes and increase spending to boost demand. The Reserve Bank of India is keeping policy rates at record low levels to encourage economic activity.

Acquisitions News: 22/1/10

PROGRESS SOFT ACQUIRES SAVVION INC
Chennai/Hyderabad
Business Standard

Application infrastructure software provider Progress Software Corporation, which has its India operations based out of Hyderabad, has acquired Savvion Inc, a California-based business enterprise software developer, for $49 million (approximately Rs 225 crore).

“Our acquisition of Savvion enhances our goal to provide unprecedented business visibility, responsiveness and business process improvement, coupled with highest degree of data integrity and integration,” Rick Reidy, president and chief executive of Progress Software, stated in a press release on Tuesday.

Progress Software, which employs 1,800 globally, has a workforce of 250 in Hyderabad. It has invested $10 million (around Rs 46 crore) in its Hyderabad facility over the last five years.

The company has revised its business outlook, reflecting the anticipated impact from the acquisition of Savvion. It expects its GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) revenues to be in the range of $538 million (Rs 2,474crore) to $548 million (Rs 2,520 crore) for the fiscal ending November 30, 2010.

Progress Software expects to issue aggregate of approximately 110,000 equity shares to six Savvion employees, who have joined Progress as part of the acquisition.

 

BHARTI-LIMELIGHT LINK UP TO DELIVER MULTIMEDIA SERVICES
Leslie D'Monte, Mumbai
Financial Chronicle  The Telegraph    

India’s largest private telecom company, Bharti Airtel, wants to help international players deliver multimedia content to Indian players, while simultaneously helping local companies to deliver content to foreign ones. It has tied up with Limelight Networks to launch content delivery network (CDN) services in the country. Limelight is the second-largest CDN player globally in terms of revenues.

The combine will set up servers in Chennai and Mumbai, that complement Airtel’s existing network infrastructure that enables it access to undersea cables via international cable landing stations at these two cities, according to Ajay Chitkara, CEO, Global Data Business, Bharti Airtel.

A CDN, according to Frost & Sullivan analysts, basically comprises technology and services that enable the rapid and uninterrupted flow of content from the origin server to the end user. There are over 20 CDN vendors, including big names like Akamai, Internap, Limelight Networks, SyncCast, BitGravity, Velocix and even Amazon. The market for CDN services in Asia is estimated to be $350 milion by 2014, while the CDN market in India is expected to be $100 million (Rs 455 crore).

Limelight Networks and Bharti Airtel will offer their customers “the ability to create a high-quality experience for their end-users — whether they’re watching an HD movie, making an online purchase, listening to music, playing a video game, or downloading a software package”.

“Over the last few years, internet usage has completely changed from using simple text to more of multimedia options (video, games, etc). Today, users expect online video, music, images, and software to behave just like content accessed by turning on a TV, playing a CD or DVD, or loading an application from a hard drive,” reasons Chitkara.

Limelight Networks would get access to one of the fastest growing emerging markets, says George Fraser, its Vice-President (EMEA & Asia).

The company’s architecture includes a dedicated optical network that connects thousands of servers around the world with over 900 last-mile access networks and 25 delivery centres. It has “eight years of experience in successfully delivering some of the largest live and on-demand events in the history of the internet, including the 2008 Beijing Games and the 2009 inauguration speech of US President Obama,” said Fraser.

Acquisitions News: 20/1/10

PROGRESS SOFT BUYS SAVVION
Hyderabad
The Hindu Business Line

Progress Software Corporation, the US-based company, has acquired Savvion Inc, a privately held business enterprise software company based in California, for a consideration of $49 million.

The business process management technology company had 300 clients, including 24 Fortune-100 companies, Rick Reidy, President and Chief Executive Officer, Progress Software, said here in a statement.

“The Savvion BPM suite is a perfect fit for Progress,” Dr John Bates, Chief Technology Officer of Progress Software, said.

 

 

AGILE LABS TEAMS UP WITH US CO SYNAPTRIS
T.E. Raja Simhan, Chennai
The Hindu Business Line

Two small companies have joined hands to tap the global market to save cost and manpower.

The US-based Synaptris and the Bangalore-based Agile Labs have signed a joint go-to market partnership to deliver data reporting solutions to Agile's global customers.

While Synaptris is a software product company, Agile is an independent software vendor that provide application development framework for its clients to build industry/business-specific solutions.

This includes enterprise resource planning, supply chain management and customer relationship management.

Synaptris will use Agile's framework to build software solutions.

On the other hand, Agile will bundle Synaptris' IntelliVIEW, a single platform for real-time reporting, dashboards and analysis. This will help customers to work on huge volumes of data collated on day-to-day operations and give ‘business insights' and interpret the data to build the business.

The partnership will take IntelliVIEW to Agile's existing and potential customers across multiple industry verticals in India, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, West Asia and Central Africa.

Manpower

“Being a small company with nearly 150 employees, we cannot stretch beyond a point in terms of manpower and investment to go global. It is better to partner with another company that is similar to us. Finally, it is a win-win situation for both the companies in partnering,” said Nagaraj L. Bhargava, Chief Operating Officer, Synaptris, which has over 2,300 customers across 80 countries and headquartered in San Jose, US.

“We help clients concentrate on their core competency of building the software solution by giving them a readymade framework. Our framework requires minimal coding to build an application, making it faster by 50-60 percent for clients. This approach enables customers to save time, effort and costs of building applications,” Raghunathan, Chief Executive Officer, Agile Labs, which has 40 employees, said without giving any financial details.

 

 

CA OPEN TO BUY LOCAL COMPANIES
Sumali Moitra, Kolkata
The Times of India (Kolkata edition)

Even at its peak, none of the acquisitions of erstwhile software major Computer Associates — which had become synonymous with M&As at one point — had ever included an Indian company.

But in its new avatar as CA, and with a chairman for its India operations who has spent long years as a venture capitalist, all that may be about to change at the Nasdaq-listed firm, which had to grapple with one of the biggest insider trading scandals in corporate America in the last decade.

“The then Computer Associates had always acquired product companies or those having some unique technology. At that point, there weren’t too many Indian companies around doing that as they were more engaged in services,” CA India chairman Saurabh Srivastava told TOI on Tuesday.

“However, with many Indian companies now doing a lot of work in the product and technology space, we are open to the idea of partnering and acquiring them, if need be,” he added, pointing out that firms engaged in the cloud computing arena are a possible area of interest for CA.

Brought on board CA India last year, Srivastava, though, was quick to clarify that there are no active acquisition deals on the table being pursued in the country currently. Significantly, CA India’s admission of its interest in acquiring local companies is the first time that the company has done so since it ceased being Computer Associates.

 

 

Acquisitions News : 19/01/10

TATA ACQUIRES MOSAIC FROM BT
S Kalyana Ramanathan, London

 Mint  The Financial Express  Financial Chronicle  

Tata Communications announced today an agreement to acquire the Mosaic business of the BT Group (formerly British Telecom).

Mosaic is a web portal-based on-demand digital media management platform that manages content and workflow from production to distribution across market ecosystems.

Details of the deal, including the acquisition cost have not been disclosed. The unaudited value of the gross assets that are the subject of this transaction was £0.5 million (Rs 3.7 crore) on September 30, 2009, a release from Tata Communications said.

The Mosaic business helps media customers improve cross-enterprise content creation, management and multi-format delivery. It is targeted at the entire spectrum of media customers encompassing production houses, emerging digital media publishers, content service providers, and TV channels, the company said.

"The acquisition of the Mosaic platform strengthens our global media and entertainment portfolio, with powerful cloud-based digital media management applications that can be accessed over the Web. This enhances our existing portfolio of services that we are offering to the media and entertainment sector" said Vinod Kumar, President and COO, Tata Communications.

SIMMTRONICS SIGNS GLOBAL PACT WITH IBM
New Delhi
The Statesman

Simmtronics Semiconductors Ltd has entered into a global agreement with IBM Corp under which IBM has authorised Simmtronics to pre-load its IBM Client for Smart Work software solution in the Simmbook on Ubuntu operating system. This includes Lotus Symphony office productivity software, which is made available at no charge to Simmbook customers.

The agreement was signed by Indrajit Sabharwal, managing director, Simmtronics Semiconductors Ltd and Kevin Cavanaugh, vice-president, messaging and collaboration, IBM Corporation at Lotusphere, Orlando, Florida, the USA.

Under the agreement, both the companies will execute a joint marketing plan and work closely on the sales opportunities for Simmbook with IBM Client for Smart Work on Ubuntu globally.

 

Alliances News : 12/1/10

ZYLOG SYSTEMS EYES ACQUISITION IN CANADA
Mumbai
Business Standard  Financial Chronicle  

IT firm Zylog Systems today said it is eying acquisition in Canada and its board has given approval to go-ahead with the bidding process.

The board, at its January 9 meeting, approved "proposed acquisition in Canada and authorised the company to go ahead with the bidding process on the basis of the recommendation of the Merger and Acquisition committee", Zylog Systems Ltd said in a filing to the BSE.

"In the event of successful bidding, board has authorised the company to go ahead with the acquisition process,"it said.

 

MICRO TECHNOLOGIES TIES UP WITH ISRAELI COMPANY
Mumbai
Business Standard

Mumbai-based security solutions provider Micro Technologies (India) has entered into an agreement with Israel-based H.A.Sh Group System Services to provide security devices to the former, a top company official said.

"Within next two years, we will be able to do business worth $100 million with Israel," Micro Technologies Chairman and Managing Director P Sekhar told PTI today on the sidelines of a press conference.

We are launching the pilot for Safe and Secure City Project in collaboration with the Israeli company H.A.Sh group system services, which will start in next three months. We will provide the latest security devices and they will customize it and use it accordingly, he said.

This is the first time that an Israeli company with global operations is buying sophisticated security devices from India, he added.

The company will provide security for sectors like ports, coastal and container, transport, and infrastructure. The company will provide devices for personal identification and cyber security too, he said.

"We found Micro Technology products are superior in quality and cost effective. So we opt for them to provide security to Israeli Cities," H.A.Sh System Services Chairman Dan Romen said.

Alliances News: 6/1/10

AIRCEL, INFY TO LAUNCH MOBILE APPLICATION STORE
New Delhi
Business Standard  Financial Chronicle  The Economic Times 

Telecom service provider Aircel today entered into a partnership with software exporter Infosys Technologies to launch the first mobile application store in the country. A mobile application store is a service, which allows users to browse and download applications either for free or at a cost.

Apple pioneered the concept of application store for its iPhone users.

Infosys, the country's second-largest software exporter by revenue, will offer a platform — FLYPP — for Aircel's mobile application store, Aircel COO Gurdeep Singh told reporters here.

The application store will provide consumers greater choice for applications related to health, finance, entertainment, he added.

The IT firm is also in talks with other global and domestic service providers for the mobile application platform, Infosys Chief Operating Officer SD Shibulal said.

The company, however, did not give the financial details of the deal.

Mergers News: 5/1/10

ADITYA BIRLA MINACS, NORTHSTAR IN DEAL TO PROVIDE WEALTH MGT
Bangalore
The Statesman  Financial Chronicle  Mint  Deccan Herald  

Business solutions company Aditya Birla Minacs has partnered with NorthStar Systems International, a provider of wealth management software solutions, to provide a total wealth management package.

This new solution combines Aditya Birla Minacs' integrated back and middle office with Northstar's fully integrated wealth management platform to create a service offering to seamlessly support wealth front offices in delivering a superior customer experience, a company release said.