Atos has had its offer of €620 million accepted by Bull’s board, allowing it to continue to build its IT Services. It’s a major deal, but not as big as its acquisition of Siemens IT Services back in 2011. In total the 2 companies’ revenues were €9,825 m ($13,169 m) in the year to the end of March. Net profit at €250 m ($335 m) was not impressive, representing only 3% of revenues. Both companies have extensive government business, although Atos’s is more European-wide than Bull’s these days. Bull will add its deep experience in mainframe maintenance, enterprise storage and supercomputing and close ties to the French nuclear industry. Atos currently has 73k and Bull 9k employees.
We think this is a good deal for both companies and represents part of a continuing consolidation in the European services market. We note that Steria recently accepted a bid from Sopra. Along with SAP the 3 new suppliers could become strong drivers of Cloud services in Europe.
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