Paris-based Atos Origin only announced the deal yesterday, but the transaction was completed at the end of last month – for an undisclosed amount of uReach shares.The sale of the US-based unit followed hot on the heels of the sale of its North American energy management business Cellnet to private equity firm GTCR Golder Rauner LLC for $175m last month. It also sold Convergence, a small, low-margin business in North America with annual sales of $15m, for $5m at the end of June 2004. In December 2003, Atos Origin announced the sale of its research and consulting operation Statilogie to smaller rival Soft Computing SA for an undisclosed sum, and in September 2003, sold its document-processing and check-processing operations to Experian.
Atos Origin is attempting to reduce its net debt from 720m euros ($888m) at the start of January 2004 to below 600m euros ($740m) by the end of the year, and following its takeover of the Sema operation of New York-based SchlumbergerSema in September 2003, the company said it would sell low-margin and non-core businesses with annual revenue of approximately 500m euros ($607m).
Earlier this month it put back the publication of its second-quarter revenue figures because of problems preparing accounts to include its acquisition of Sema.
It has rescheduled the announcement date to September 8, from August 13, when it will publish second-quarter sales along with its first-half earnings.
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