M&A News: 9/4/10

MPHASIS: PURCHASE WON’T FORTIFY NUMBERS IN SHORT TERM
Ranjit Shinde
The Economic Times

Remote IT solutions provider Fortify Infrastructure Services has a smaller size of operations. Hence, its acquisition will not have any significant influence on MphasiS’ short-term financials.

The MphasiS management hopes that the deal will improve its presence in the fast-growing segment of outcome-based remote operations management.

MphasiS has paid over $15.5 million (approximately Rs 70.5 crore) to own 100% in Fortify. The deal size may increase in future since MphasiS has agreed to make performance-based payments to Fortify in two tranches over the next two years. There is no clarity on the size of these payments or earnouts. Therefore, it is difficult to ascertain the total size of the deal.

 

NETAPP TO ACQUIRE BYCAST
Bangalore
The Hindu Business Line

NetApp, provider of innovative storage and data management solutions, on Thursday announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Bycast Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in an all-cash transaction.

Bycast is a leading developer of object-based storage software designed to manage petabyte-scale, globally distributed repositories of images, video, and records for enterprises and service providers. With the acquisition of Bycast, NetApp broadens its capabilities in serving key verticals such as digital media, Web 2.0, healthcare, and cloud services providers and helps customers create even greater efficiencies across data centres around the globe, a company press release said.

 

AI IN $190-M DEAL WITH SITA FOR PASSENGER SERVICE PLATFORM
Mumbai
The Financial Express  The Hindu Business Line

National Aviation Company of India (Nacil), which runs national carrier Air India, has roped in SITA, an aviation IT specialist, to provide it a Horizon passenger services system (PSS) on a turnkey basis following a global competitive tendering process. The deal with the 13.5-million passenger airline is valued at $190 million (Rs 874 crore), and has a tenure of 10 years.

SITA’s Horizon platform provides hosted PSS services to 140 airlines boarding 120 million passengers and will be used to deliver a single airline code in order to allow the seamless integration of the former domestic carrier, Indian Airlines, with Air India for the first time since they merged in August 2007. Another early deliverable will enable Air India to meet the requirements for joining the Star Alliance.