Xansa Acquisition by Steria: India Focal Point

Steria acquires Xansa. This acquisition shall give Steria the potential to expand in the Asian markets and the much needed muscle to compete with India 's big three IT services companies, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), Infosys Technologies Ltd and Wipro Ltd. This acquisition will not only accelerate Steria among the top 10 IT Service providers in Europe but also give it access to Xansa's strong operations base in India with expertise in the public services and financial services sectors and combined revenue in excess of $2.4 billion.

The deal follows the footsteps of the acquisition by Capgemini SA, Europe 's biggest computer-services company of Rosemont, Illinois-based Kanbay International Inc., provider of IT services for banks and financial institutions for $1.25 billion in the last week of October 2006. The combined entity today has about 17,000 employees in India, representing 22% of Capgemini's total workforce. The Steria-Xansa and the earlier Capgemini-Kanbay deal put other global IT services companies such as Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Accenture and Computer Associates (CA) on notice, as these have the potential to shake important account/clients' renewals.