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Author: Cornelia Wels-Maug
TietoEnator announced its third vertical niche acquisition in the health care sector in Germany, with the purchase of Cymed, a small German IT healthcare provider specialising in information systems for hospitals and hygiene software for hospitals and laboratories. As of 1 October, TietoEnator acquired the entire share capital of Bochum-based Cymed for €5.1m. Cymed has 34 employees and expects revenues of €3.5m in 2006; its management will remain unchanged. Cymed's three software product lines have around 500 clients across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
Comment: This acquisition clearly strengthens TietoEnator's presence in the healthcare sector and is an important step towards its aim to become a leading pan-European supplier of IT solutions on the European health market. Cymed claims that one of its products, Hybase, is market leader in Germany and Austria.
Currently TietoEnator's healthcare division operates in eleven countries with around 1,200 staff. Its revenues still stem to a large degree from its Nordic home territory, but TietoEnator's successive acquisitions in one of Europe's largest healthcare market will help to balance this out. It bought healthcare information system specialist ITB (EuroView Daily, 1 February 2005), bringing TietoEnator 120 Indian software developers, and Mannheim-based Waldbrenner (EuroView Daily, 5 November 2005), whose 30 staff provide patient administration and clinical documentation software for German and Luxembourg hospitals.
In addition to these healthcare acquisitions, we've witnessed TietoEnator's attempts to penetrate the general German market: only in August it bought SAP consultancy Topas Consulting (EuroView Daily, 22 August). And before that, it won a major R&D outsourcing deal with Siemens Com (EuroView Daily, 27 March) in the telecoms area.
Though TietoEnator has been successful in buying niche players, its more recent attempts to buy on a large scale haven't yet materialized. When Jürgen Hatzipantelis, head of TietoEnator's German operations, tried to acquire SBS's outsourcing business for the financial services sector and parts of its BPO business in July, Siemens's Kleinfeld didn't make any move - hence, we might see further acquisitions of niche players for some time.
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