Atos To Acquire Fellow French Outfit Bull

The French IT services giant Atos is to acquire computer company Bull for €620 million (£504m million).

The deal should help bolster Atos’ cloud computing service offerings, including those designed for cyber security and big data.

French Deal

Under the terms of the deal, Atos said it would offer €4.90 (£3.99) per Bull’s share in cash, representing a 22 percent premium over the Bull’s closing price of €4.01 (£3.26) last Friday.

Bull is now perhaps best know as a Cloud player which specialises in cybersecurity, big data and high performance computing. Last year it posted revenues of €1,262 billion (£1bn) and has operations across more than 50 countries.

“I welcome this combination as a major step to anchor our European leadership in Cloud, Big Data, and Cybersecurity, toward our 2016 Ambition to become a Tier 1 company and THE preferred European global IT brand,” said Thierry Breton, chairman and CEO of Atos. “Bull’s highly recognized teams in advanced technologies such as high computing power, data analytics management, and cybersecurity ideally complement Atos’ large scale operations.”

“Bull Group will strongly benefit from joining Atos, one of the most successful global IT company, in order to accelerate “One Bull” strategic plan implementation,” added Philippe Vannier, chairman and CEO of Bull Group. “Together with Atos we share the same passion for business technology.”

Bull used to be known as ‘Compagnie des Machines Bull’, and made its name in the early days of the IT industry as a hardware manufacturer. The firm itself was established back in 1930s and was once seen as a major competitor to IBM in the 1950s and 1960s, at least in the mainframe industry.

Government Bailouts

But time was not kind to the company and its ownership changed hands a number of times. It received numerous bailouts from the French government and was nationalised in 1982, and then re-privatised in the 1990s. Its expansion into the PC industry with the purchase of Zenith Data Systems almost bankrupted the company.

Yet the deal by Atos to acquire Bull is remarkable because Atos chief executive Thierry Breton used to work for Bull back in the 1990s.

Breton was also a former French finance minister from 2005 to 2007. Bull recieved more than €1 billion (£814m) in state aid between 2001 and 2005.

Back in 2011, Atos announced it would ban the use of email for internal office communications. Atos said the volume of email it was dealing with was “unsustainable,” and would therefore make its employees communicate via instant messaging (IM), social community platforms and collaboration tools.

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