Wipro eyeing foreign firms for acquisition

Anshuman Daga

BANGALORE: Wipro Ltd, India's biggest software firm by market value, has put

together a shopping list of overseas firms it can target for acquisition,

vice-chairman Vivek Paul said on Friday. The list includes telecom service

providers and information technology firms, Paul told Reuters in Bangalore.

"The bottomline is that good companies are not up for sale and if you

want to do it (acquire firms), there is a little bit of mutual wooing that

happens and it does not happen overnight," Paul said. "It's like a

marriage. We have done lot of dating but not sent out marriage

invitations."

But he declined to name any potential candidates. India's third-largest

software exporter last year raised about $114 million in a share sale on the New

York Stock Exchange and cited acquisitions of foreign firms as one of the

reasons for the overseas issue.

Like rival Infosys Technologies Ltd which is listed on Nasdaq, Wipro has been

keen to shop overseas to add marketing skills and high-value customers but has

yet to buy any. "It's pretty self-evident that we are trying to grow in the

telecom service providers' space and high-end projects in the information

technology space," Paul said.

"These are a few broad spaces we are looking at." Wipro boasts a

market capitalization of about $7 billion, followed by Infosys at about $5

billion. There was market talk last month that Wipro is close to striking a deal

with either loss-making U.S. Internet consulting Sapient Corp or Boston-based

information technology firm Keane Inc.

Brian Keane, the president of Keane, last month said he was focused on making

acquisitions, confounding speculation the firm is a takeover target for the

Indian software giant. Wipro has said it has no agreement to acquire any US

firm, but that it routinely discusses potential acquisitions.

Indian software companies derive more than half their revenues from the

United States. Wipro's stock was up 1.5 per cent at Rs 1,386 in late afternoon

trade on Friday while Bombay's main 30-share index was down 0.80 per cent.

Before markets opened, Wipro reported a 93 percent rise in unconsolidated net

profit for the period from April to June, to Rs 2.08 billion ($44 million),

below the 108 percent jump forecast by a Reuters poll of 12 brokerages.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.