German software vendors Rembold & Holzer Holding und Software GmbH, of Breisach am Rhein, and BIW Beratungs und Informationssysteme GmbH from Weinstadt have merged in order to compete with giants SAP and Baan for business from medium-sized companies. The merged enterprise bears the name Brain International and is currently still a privately held company. There are plans to go public on the Neuer Markt in Frankfurt in the first half of 1999, however. In preparation for that event, the company will be changing to publicly-held status and the owners will be injecting fresh capital to bring the total to around $5.5-$8.3m. The plan is to issue new shares for the IPO, increasing the overall capital by 35%-40%, according to CFO Thomas Holzer. Brain has some 750 employees and expects revenues this year of around $90m. The new enterprise comes into existence with an international presence. R+H, which has tended to follow the European auto-makers, is in France, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, the UK and Portugal, as well as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina and, recently, in the US. BIW was already in Russia and Hungary. The joint founders and owners of R+H, Kurt Rembold and Holzer now control 55% of Brain, while their counterpart from BIW, Helmut Polzer has a 15% share, as do IBM’s German subsidiary (its EDI software runs primarily on the AS/400) and the local office of consultancy Ernst & Young. Holzer said the company is currently merging its product lines, the idea being to come up with a single offering by the end of this year. Holzer said the rationale for the merger was the increased competition for medium-size companies’ IT requirements, as the big players like SAP and Baan turn their attention more to that segment, since demand is slowing among their present market in major corporations.
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