Virtusa acquires ALaS for $27.8 million

BANGALORE, INDIA: Global IT services company, Virtusa Corporation, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired all the assets of ALaS Consulting LLC, a provider of consulting and advisory services to financial services companies.

Under the terms of the asset purchase agreement, Virtusa acquired all the assets of ALaS for $27.8 million, of which 10 per cent has been held back by the former for a period of 12 months as security for the sellers' indemnification obligations under the asset purchase agreement, stated a press release.

As part of the transaction, all the employees of ALaS, including the management team, accepted employment with Virtusa, which has agreed to issue an aggregate of up to $4 million in shares of restricted stock from Virtusa's stock option and incentive plan - not to exceed 250,000 shares - to the new employees. The release added that the shares would vest annually over a four year period.

The acquisition is expected to expand Virtusa's position within the banking and financial services industries (BFSI), by adding capital markets and investment banking domain expertise, consulting and program management skills, the release added.

The company claimed that ALaS provided it with about 150 practitioners, including former senior Wall Street professionals, driving critical initiatives in areas such as regulatory compliance, trading desk operations improvement and controls, software package selection, program management and functional testing, and increasing automation to reduce costs.

About the acquisition, Kris Canekeratne, chairman and CEO of Virtusa said, “Erik DiGiacomo, president of ALaS, will lead our new capital markets line of business. This acquisition will further enable Virtusa to identify and execute transformational programmes, take on the downstream technology implementation and strengthen our strategic position across our BFSI client base.”

Samir Dhir, senior vice-president and head of India operations, Virtusa, “India has been a growing market for BFS consulting and IT services. Now, we will be able to combine deep industry expertise in investment banking/capital markets with robust technology implementation capabilities to offer efficient solutions to India-based BFS organizations."

He added that they would be able to leverage ALaS’ strong domain expertise to train and develop an extended pool of offshore business analysts, who can then support delivery of capital markets solutions, both at client sites and in the Indian market.