Breakaway Solutions, a Massachusetts-based company specialising in Internet strategy, implementation and hosting services, announced this week the acquisition of Irish e-business firm Zartis Ltd, marking the first step in a major drive by Breakaway to increase its European business base.
Dublin-based Zartis, an Internet design and development company, has been bought for US$18m in cash and shares. Founded just a year ago, the entirely self-financed start-up will make millionaires of its five founding shareholders, who are all still only in their twenties.
Zartis, which has 40 employees, will become the first European solutions centre for Breakaway and will serve such clients as EMETRA, eumedIX, and GoIndustry, while also helping Breakaway expand its e-commerce services in the ever-growing European market. John Dennehy, CEO of Zartis, said of the deal: 'Despite a number of previous acquisition attempts, this was not a route we had contemplated as we planned to grow the company organically. But we met Breakaway in the middle of a funding round and their vision seemed to completely validate our own. They have the expertise as a full service provider to allow us maintain and host applications for our clients. That speeds up the Zartis business plan by about two years.'
Breakaway Solutions plans to immediately begin expanding its Irish software development centre to 70 employees by the end of 2000. Mr Bill Loftus, senior vice president of operations at Breakaway, expects Breakaway Solutions Ireland to employ around 300 people within the next three years. It is believed Breakaway considered more than 100 European e-business service companies as possible acquisition targets before choosing Zartis. Factors included the low labour costs in Ireland, relatively low taxes in comparison to mainland Europe, and access to a highly skilled workforce. Another factor was the fact that Zartis has a promising wireless practice that includes projects with Formus Broadband Communications and Irishabroad.com.
Gordon Brooks, president and CEO of Breakaway commented: 'We already have a number of clients in Europe and this acquisition will help us to serve those clients as well as capitalize on the remarkable growth in demand for growing enterprise e-services and application hosting in the years to come.'
Zartis certainly seems to be prospering, given the fact it was only established a year ago. Earlier this year it was awarded the contract to design, build and implement WorldofFruit.com's e-commerce project and since it was set up, it has attracted key personnel from big names including Netscape, Oracle and IBM.
.
Network Tweets
Network BlogsContent
provided by
|
Archive | Resources | Partners | Site Map | Links | Newsletter Archive | Contact | RSS Feeds | About | Syndication | Advertising & Marketing | Recruitment | Terms & Conditions | Privacy
Copyright © 2012 - All Rights Reserved - Tax-News.com
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Tax-News.com has taken reasonable care in sourcing and presenting the information contained on this site, but accepts no responsibility for any financial or other loss or damage that may result from its use. In particular, users of the site are advised to take appropriate professional advice before committing themselves to involvement in offshore jurisdictions, offshore trusts or offshore investments.
Write a comment