Dutch manufacturing software concern Baan Co NV has been shopping across the Atlantic and is to pay the equivalent of $250m in shares for customer management software Aurum Software Corp, nine times the company’s 1996 revenue. Baan claims that putting the two companies’ product lines together will result in the first end-to-end solution bridging sales, marketing and customer service applications with the enterprise resource planning software which is Baan’s specialty. Under the deal, which was announced after the market closed last night, Baan will swap 0.3559 share for each Aurum share putting a value of $21 on the Santa Clara, California company’s stock as of May 9th; in fact a $3.875 premium over Tuesday’s closing price. The acquisition will be accounted for as a pooling of interests and Baan expects to take a one-time charge in the third quarter to cover acquisition costs and other expenses. Baan shares closed down $1.825 on the day at $60.50. Aurum earned $0.3m on its $27.6m 1996 revenue; it reported earnings of $0.5m on sales of $9.3m in its most recent quarter. Baan began heading down the front office track when it acquired sales configuration application company Antalys in 1996 (CI No 3,046).
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