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Ascension assumes empowerment role in Datatec

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 05 Sept 2019
Datatec CEO Jens Montanana.
Datatec CEO Jens Montanana.

JSE-listed international ICT company Datatec has a new empowerment partner for its subsidiary Westcon Southern Africa.

The change in the composition of the black economic empowerment (BEE) partner follows the disposal of 40% equity interest in the company by MIC Investment Holdings to Ascension Capital Partners, led by former Public Investment Corporation senior legal adviser Kabelo Moja.

Westcon maintains its level one BEE rating after the transaction.

The company, which distributes value-added technology solutions in security, collaboration, networking and data centres, has been relatively successful in its sphere.

It made $98.8 million (R1.47 billion) revenue for the financial year to end February, slightly down from $102.6 million (R1.51 billion) in the previous year.

Datatec CEO Jens Montanana comments: “I am delighted to welcome Ascension as our new BEE partner in Westcon SA and thank the MIC for its valued contributions during its nine years as a shareholder of Westcon SA.

“As a South African company, Datatec strongly supports the BEE programme and we are very proud of the level one BEE rating achieved by Westcon SA.”

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, another Datatec subsidiary, Logicalis, acquired two businesses in Europe.

The company announced Logicalis Group had purchased a 70% interest in Cilnet, a Cisco systems integrator and managed services business in Portugal. This increases Logicalis’ Cisco technical expertise for the Iberian region and complements the existing Spanish operation with data centre, collaboration, networking, infrastructure and managed services capabilities, expanding the offering to the region.

Cilnet was founded in 2000 and has over 90 employees, including eight Cisco-certified internetwork experts.

The company designs and integrates networking, data centre and contact centre solutions, complemented with security, managed services and application development skills, with annual revenue of EUR20 million.

In addition, Logicalis Germany acquired Orange Networks, a Microsoft services business focused on Microsoft cloud and managed services, with Germany-wide presence, including in Hamburg, Munich, Offenbach and Düsseldorf.

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