Asseco Poland and Prokom Software said yesterday that they had signed merger agreement. The transaction should be concluded before March 2008. Asseco is to buy the stock of the company from Ryszard Krauze, Prokom’s CEO and founder, and from Prokom Investments, for PLN 580m. The agreement prepared last week, changed slightly – Prokom Investment is no longer supposed to pay back its debts of PLN 180m to Prokom Software. No one knows why.
After the merger, Adam Goral, Asseco CEO, will manage Poland’s biggest IT group. Asseco will buy Prokom’s shares PLN 120m cheaper then previously planned. It will finance the transaction from a bank credit. Next year, it is going to issue new shares, pay back the credit, and acquire further companies.
“In several months’ time we will prove that Prokom is worth this price. We will be Europe’s seventh largest company. Thanks to the merger with Prokom, we will be able to substantially increase income of the company”, Adam Goral said a week ago.
In the merger, an IT giant with over PLN 5bn of capitalization will be founded. Prokom focuses on the public sector and conducted computer contracts for ZUS, Poczta Polska and PZU. Asseco is an expert in the banking sector. PKO BP and Polish unit of Deutsche Bank are just some of its clients.
Asseco has transformed into a giant with PLN 500m of sales and PLN 65m of net income in the first half of this year within three years. Before, Comp Rzeszow (Asseco’s previous name) had PLN 100m of sales and PLN 10m of net income.
(PLN 1 = EUR 0.265)