Mumbai, Oct 27: Silverline Technologies Ltd and SeraNova Inc, the Raj Koneru promoted Internet services company have announced an agreement providing for Silverline's acquisition of the Nasdaq-listed SeraNova Inc, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $99 million. Mr Shankar Iyer, president and CEO of Silverline Technologies, said that the deal was likely to bear fruit in the next 60-90 days. As per the agreement, Silverline will acquire all of SeraNova's outstanding shares. The exchange ratio of SeraNova shares to Silverline's ADR shares has been set at 0.35. Salomon Smith Barney is the advisor to Silverline Technologies for this transaction.This is Silverline's fifth acquisition and the third one this year. Earlier this year, the company acquired SCI Hong Kong and CIT.
The combination of the two players will create a company whose combined revenues for the 12 months ended June 30, 2000 stands at $175 million, with over 2,600 eBusiness and Enterprise systems professionals. "The acquisition of SeraNova is larger than any of our previous ones and it gives us the capability to be an end-to-end services company" said Mr Iyer.
Commenting on the transaction, SeraNova chairman Raj Koneru said, "We view the Silverline merger as a natural evolution of our strategy of migrating our business towards an offshore execution model." Silverline's expertise in legacy applications will complement SeraNova's e-business expertise, enhancing the merged entity's ability to compete in the global marketplace, said Mr Iyer. On completion of the acquisition, Silverline will have a presence in 12 countries and its key clients will include American Express, Bell Atlantic, First Data, Hewlett Packard, JP Morgan, Novell and Volkswagen of America.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.