Tuesday, August 05, 2003

Ascential joins business buying spree | CNET News.com

Ascential joins business buying spree | CNET News.com: "Ascential Software on Monday announced plans to buy Mercator Software for $106 million, a new sign of consolidation in the business software market.
The company will pay $3 per share to acquire Mercator. That represents a 22-percent premium over the stock's closing price on Friday of $2.45. The combined companies will have 3,000 customers and revenue of about $250 million.
Executives of both companies said the acquisition will create a suite of software tools for managing corporate data, in both transaction-processing systems and applications that analyze business operations.
Westborough, Mass.-based Ascential sells software that pulls information from various data sources, reformats it and transports it between different applications. Ascential's tools are used mainly for building databases that business analysts use to spot trends in historical sales data and other information.
Mercator, which is based in Wilton, Conn., also sells data-integration software, but its tools focus on systems for conducting transactions. The software routes data between businesses making transactions, such as commodities trades between financial services companies. Mercator has built data-integration software for specific industries, including financial services, health care and retail. "

No comments: