PC-WARE South Africa, an EMEA Microsoft large account reseller, announced today that the mother company will acquire Comparex Central Europe and Iberia.
In 2002, Comparex in Europe was bought by a management consortium, and in 2004, information technology group Comparex, based in South Africa, completed a merger between its subsidiary Comparex Africa and a local South African IT company.
PC-WARE will acquire Comparex Central Europe and Iberia - a group of companies belonging to Comparex Group BV, Netherlands, retrospectively as from 1 June 2007.
As part of the acquisition, enterprises in a total of eight countries will be taken over - based in Austria, Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
In finalising the agreement for a 100% interest in the companies to be acquired, the PC-WARE Group has strengthened its market position in Europe by a substantial margin. The acquired enterprises of the Comparex Group have a highly-successful track-record spanning several years, and generated an aggregated annual revenue of approximately EUR110 million (R1 billion) in the 2006/7 financial year, with EBITDA amounting to over EUR4.5 million (R400 million).
Employing around 290 people, the group of companies has a solid, long-standing customer base and mainly serves large accounts within the telecommunications and financial industries as well as in the public sector. In acquiring Comparex Central Europe and Iberia, PC-WARE has gained access to new markets, particularly the dynamically growing Spanish market, as well as achieving better market coverage in many Eastern European countries and in Austria.
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PC-WARE Information Technologies is one of the leading manufacturer-independent IT enterprises, offering a comprehensive service portfolio which covers licensing of standardised software, software management, system support, proprietary software solutions.
PC-WARE is the outright market leader in Europe within its core business of software licensing and licence management and has been growing its business very rapidly in SA, after opening its subsidiary in 2003.
Employing more than 1 200 people and serving around 85 000 customers, the company also operates subsidiaries in 15 European countries as well as in China, Russia and the US.
PC-WARE was granted European Large Account Reseller (ELAR) status for the whole of Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA region) by Microsoft, one of the company's key business associates.
Working with co-operation partners, the company is able to cover markets in North and South America, Asia, Australia and Eastern Europe, in addition to serving global customers.
PC-WARE co-operates closely with a number of IT specialists, including Microsoft, Adobe, Citrix, Business Objects, VMware, Novell, Symantec, McAfee, Veritas, Computer Associates, Oracle, Attachmate, Borland, Fujitsu-Siemens, IBM/Lotus and Hewlett Packard.
The company has been operating profitably since its inception in 1990. Activities within the area of software licence reselling commenced in 1993. PC-WARE has been listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 5 May 2000.