All four one

Asseco Business Solutions (ABS), a subsidiary of Asseco Polska, recently acquired four leading Polish IT companies - Safo, Softlab, Wa-Pro and Incenti - and is currently working on its issue prospectus. The company hopes to debut on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) at the end of September and take zł.70 million from the floor to fund further acquisitions. It is already in advanced negotiations with companies from Slovakia, Croatia and Romania.

"The recent acquisition of four well-known, segment-leading companies gives us an opportunity to serve different customers on every level and benefit from the synergy," says Romuald Rutkowski, president of ABS' managing board. Rutkowski states that ABS is constantly looking for new companies to acquire.

"We do believe that there is room for everyone on the market - global IT companies haven't eliminated local players," he says. ABS is looking for companies which have a significant market share, but are experiencing difficulties developing their products further.

The company's key areas are enterprise resource-planning software, outsourcing services, e-learning and computer-systems integration. The four companies that have joined ABS closed 2006 with a combined net profit of zł.10 million. "[These companies have] been growing pretty rapidly for the last few years and we hope [Asseco] can grow by 20-25 percent a year," says Asseco Poland's president Adam Góral. He also announced that by the end of the year the Czech subsidiary of Asseco and Asseco Systems are also to debut on the stock exchange.