The Lawson board is considering Infor’s offer International IT vendor consolidation is continuing as one-stop-shops seen as the future...
Global software conglomerate Infor Global Solutions has made a bid for Lawson Software in a US$1.8billion deal. If it goes ahead – the Lawson board and their advisors are only now considering the unsolicited approach – it will create the third largest ERP vendor behind SAP and Oracle. Infor, the owner of the previously well known Syteline and Baan ERP solutions, has bought up more than 30 vendors over recent years under its private equity partner Golden Gate Capital. The deal will add around US$740 million to Infor’s revenues.
Shares in Lawson have been trading at around US$12 against the offer of $11.25. Some analysts are commenting that both Infor and Lawson require significant development investment to create fully cloud-based solutions from their portfolio of primarily client-server architectures, something that may be more easily achieved under private equity arrangement. An IPO for Infor has been touted for some time.
