Internet investing service company E*Trade Group Inc has acquired ShareData Inc, a provider of software to manage employee stock option plans in a stock transaction worth about $30m, based on E*Trade’s closing price yesterday. The acquisition of ShareData is supposed to give Palo Alto-based E*Trade a better presence in the corporate services market, especially within pre-IPO and publicly-traded companies and the addition of the ShareData technology is said to enable E*Trade’s customers to manage both their option and stock plan purchase plan accounts as well as their personal investments through existing E*Trade tools. Last November E*Trade acquired the OptionsLink business of investment bank Hambrecht & Quist LLC, which gave it a tool for employees to carry out transactions with their options. ShareData has technology to complement that, says E*Trade. Its main products are Equity Edge 2.0 and its new intranet-based Options Online. It also has about 130 employees and a corporate customer base of about 2,500 companies. After the transaction, which is expected to close this quarter, shareholders in ShareData will own approximately three percent of the shares of E*Trade – about 1.3 million shares. Privately-held ShareData, which was formed back in 1983, recorded revenues last year of about $12m. The final value of the transaction will be determined when it closes.
