Capgemini takes control of Altran to position itself in the industry digitization market

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Capgemini has successfully launched its tender offer for the engineering and technology consultancy group Altran, according to the results of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers on January 27, 2020. After settlement-delivery , which will take place on February 4, 2020, the French IT services group will hold 137,674,545 Altran shares, representing 53.75% of the capital and at least 53.41% of the voting rights.

"Together Capgemini and Altran will be able to offer a unique combination of expertise and become a world leader in the 'Intelligent Industry''", welcomed Paul Hermelin, Chairman and CEO of Capgemini and Aiman ​​Ezzat, the group's next CEO.

The Court of Appeal has yet to decide

Despite this good news, there is a long way to go. The group is awaiting the decision of the Paris Court of Appeal, which will rule by March 2020 on the complaint by the Association for the Defense of Minority Shareholders (Adam) on the validity of the AMF visa. If the latter is validated by the jurisdiction, the French IT giant will become fully majority shareholder of Altran. Capgemini has stated that it will refrain from trying to gain complete control of Altran for 18 months.

Two outcomes are therefore possible. If the court of appeal validates the AMF visa, Capgemini is committed to relaunching its purchase offer at 14.5 euros to capture the undecided shareholders. And if the French court rejects the procedure, the group has promised to return the Altran shares to all shareholders who wish and file a new offer, thus delaying the effective takeover.

Position yourself in the industry digitalization markets

Capgemini announced in June 2019 its intention to take control of Altran in order to position itself in the future digitization markets of the industry. "There are two technological worlds that are fertilizing each other: the world that was ours, that of information technologies – artificial intelligence, data analysis, cloud, cybersecurity, 5G, smart health connected objects , calculation – and the world that was more that of Altran, operational technologies, software and software package engineering, product and systems engineering, manufacturing engineering"said Paul Hermelin at a press conference the day after the announcement.

Conversely, according to Dominique Cerutti, Altran finds in the French juggernaut a purely computer dimension which it has hitherto lacked. Taking the example of the automobile, he explained that Altran "controls everything that goes on in the car itself", but that autonomous vehicles pose new challenges on"data management, which is going to be gigantic".

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