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Wipro to buy Canadian firm's IT unit [DNA : Daily News & Analysis (India)](DNA : Daily News & Analysis (India) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Bangalore: Wipro, the country's third largest software company, has decided to buy IT services arm of Canada's ATCO in an all-cash consideration of $195 million. The acquisition will essentially strengthen Wipro's presence in Canada and boost its presence in the energy and natural resources vertical. As part of the contract, Wipro will provide ATCO with complete end-to-end IT services as well as provide them with other domain expertise. It expects revenues of over $112 million from the contract each year for the next 10 years, up to December 2024. "We just hope it will be lot more than that. This is a very conservative number," said Anand Padmanabhan, chief executive - energy, natural resources and utilities, Wipro. The energy and natural resources business has been one of the fastest growing business division for Wipro. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the July-September quarter. The deal has been struck at a time when Wipro is struggling to keep pace with its rivals Infosys and TCS. "The deal is both transformational as well as outsourcing for us. We will be providing complete end-to-end services to ATCO as well as will be giving significant amount of transformational content," said Padmanabhan. He said Wipro traditionally has had a strong presence in the utilities space in Europe and this engagement provides momentum to their business in Canada and Australia. "The alliance with ATCO enhances our capability to create, nurture and tap local talent to power our growth journey in Canada." All of the ATCO's 550 employees, 500 in Canada and 50 in Australia, will now be part of Wipro. "We want to take them on board as they come with a lot of domain knowledge," said Padmanabhan. Wipro's IT services delivery model will be further strengthened in North America and Australia by ATCO I-Tek, a subsidiary of ATCO with a presence in both these geographies, which will now become a part of Wipro. ATCO I-Tek has been providing IT services to ATCO for the past 15 years. Credit:dna correspondent (c) 2014 @ 2014 DILIGENT MEDIA CORPORATION LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED |