Dallas-based ACS may have new suitor
SOURCE:
DATE: July 7th, 2008
Perpetual acquisition target Affiliated Computer Services Inc. may have another suitor in the next few weeks.
Experts say there is growing buzz that an unnamed private equity firm will soon make a pitch for the Dallas-based outsourcing company.
Ben Trowbridge, chief executive of Dallas-based Alsbridge Inc., which advises companies on how to pick outsourcing partners such as ACS, said he has spoken with an employee at the private equity firm who said the firm is preparing an offer for one of the big U.S. outsourcing companies.
Based on what he heard, Mr. Trowbridge calculated that ACS is the most likely candidate.
“I know they’re working on it,” Mr. Trowbridge said. “They were taking a deal to their finance committee right after the Fourth of July. After it goes to their finance committee, they [will] announce something.”
Alsbridge’s nonexecutive chairman is Morton Meyerson, who previously headed the other two local outsourcing giants, Perot Systems Corp. and Electronic Data Systems Inc.
EDS is in the process of being bought by Hewlett-Packard Inc. for $13.9 billion, a deal that some experts predicted might kick off a wave of consolidation in the industry.
Peter Bendor-Samuel, founder of Everest Group, another
“I hear these rumors fairly consistently,” he said. “Certainly private equity is interested in ACS.
“I had heard through back channels that another [offer] was being made.”
But Mr. Bendor-Samuel noted that other previously rumored offers have never come to fruition.
ACS went through an acrimonious buyout negotiation last year with another private equity firm, Cerberus Capital Management, and ACS’s founder, Darwin Deason.
After that $6.2 billion deal fell apart and ACS’s board resigned, the company said it was ready to forge ahead as a stand-alone, publicly held entity, a stance it reiterated when asked about the new buyout rumors.
“Our position is unchanged,” spokesman Kevin Lightfoot said. “We’re operating as a public company.
“Having said that, anything further, we don’t comment on market rumors.”
Mr. Bendor-Samuel said ACS needs to either be bought or make some big purchases of its own if it wants to reignite its stock.
“In some respects, ACS faces a very similar issue that EDS did,” he said. “They’ve gone through fast growth, and they’re now of the size where achieving that growth is going to be more difficult.”
But, he said, any private equity firm making a bid for ACS will have to win the support of Mr. Deason, who still controls a substantial portion of the company’s shares.
If a private equity company buys ACS, Mr. Trowbridge said, that firm might also eventually purchase another outsourcing company, such as Computer Sciences Corp., which has substantial operations in the
“That would be my guess, to get some synergies by bolting the two together,” he said.
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