Siemens sells IT unit Solutions to Atos Origin in €850m deal
FRANCE’S Atos Origin will acquire Siemens’ IT unit Solutions and Services (SIS) in an €850m (£721.1m) deal, the German conglomerate said late yesterday.
“We are creating a European Champion,” Siemens chief executive officer Peter Loescher said.
The deal is expected to have a “considerable negative earnings impact” in Siemens’ fiscal 2011, it said in a statement. The deal is structured in order to be short-term accretive on the earnings per share for Atos Origin, it added.
The deal caps efforts by Europe’s biggest engineering company to spin off its money-losing IT unit and paves the way for Atos Origin to reach a global scale.
Following this deal, Atos Origin will become a major league player in cloud computing, which Siemens said will be a major growth driver in future. The combined group will have pro forma revenues of around €8.7bn, making it the largest in Europe.