Former Pick-poppers Vmark Software Inc and Unidata Inc have decided that the best way to gain sufficient momentum to break into new markets is to join forces and yesterday agreed to create a new company with combined revenues of $112m that sees each share of privately-held Unidata stock exchanged for 0.45 shares of Vmark stock. Based upon the $11.62 closing price of Vmark’s stock on Tuesday the deal is valued at around $60m and is expected to complete in December. The company will get a new name and will be headquartered at Vmark premises in Westborough, Massachusetts. There will be some layoffs among the 370 Vmark and 330 Unidata employees although the company couldn’t say how many that would be at press time. The focus of the new company will be Unidata’s universal object database and associated tools, alongside Vmark’s data warehousing software and the object- oriented products from Unidata’s recent O2 Technology SA acquisition (CI No 3,240). It’ll continue to service Vmark’s UniVerse Pick-under-Unix and Unidata nested relational database customers. There are no plans to integrate the technologies into a single product stream although the company says it will create new products that incorporate Vmark and Unidata technology. It will present its plans in the form of a roadmap promised for six weeks time. Vmark president and CEO Peter Gyenes will be chairman and CEO of the combined company. Unidata president David Brunel will be president and COO. Vmark expects the acquisition to be accretive to its earnings per share in 1998. Vmark warned it expects its third quarter revenues to be down to $13.7m from $15m last time due to the sale of its NetWare education business earlier this year (CI No 3,073), and its continuing transition to data warehousing.
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