Atos gets friendly with Gemalto

Atos looks set to embark on another substantial acquisition, should its advances to Amsterdam-headquartered Gemalto be accepted. Atos delivered an offer to Gemalto – an all cash offer of €46 per share, valuing the company at c€4.3b – on 28^th November, a 42% premium to its prior close. Atos has made clear its willingness to discuss the offer, stating that it is “friendly, compelling, and addresses the interests of all stakeholders”. It is expected that Gemalto will respond by this coming Friday (15^th December).

Gemalto does not feature heavily in TechMarketView’s research. While it has global revenues of €3.1b (and 15K employees), according to Companies House, Gemalto UK had turnover of just shy of £100m in FY16 and c300 employees. And very little of that sits in our software and IT services space. In the UK, Gemalto is predominantly known as a card and chip manufacturer, for the personalisation and distribution of smart cards and magnetic stripe cards to the telecoms & banking industries (see Understanding the UK payments market). This footprint also took it, in 2012, into a six-year contract (with extension options) with the UK’s Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) – see Gemalto beats IBM to driving license contract – for the supply of a range of official permits.

However, worldwide, Gemalto is about more than card manufacturing. Read more…

Posted by Georgina O'Toole at '21:58' - Tagged: acquisition   payments   M&A   identity   cyber