Montreal based CGI (GIB-A.TO) continued its acquisition spree this week. The company made an all cash offer of $6 per share to acquire all outstanding shares of Sweden based Acando AB, which has operations in Germany and throughout northern Europe. This represents a 44.2% premium to Acando’s closing price on March 8, 2019. The acquisition would be carried out through CGI’s subsidiary CGI Nordic Holdings Limited.

Acando’s consultants combine deep technical expertise with human behavioral insights to help clients maximize the power of technology to achieve their business goals. Their more than 2,000 employees operate primarily in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany and Latvia. The company’s Board of Directors is recommending that its shareholders accept CGI’s Offer, which represents a total price of $624 million, including the assumption of over $13 million in debt. Acando reported revenues of more than $400 million in 2018.

“CGI’s offer to merge with Acando is aligned to the metro-market based element of our acquisition strategy,” said George D. Schindler, CGI President and Chief Executive Officer (pictured). “Our continued investment in CGI’s proximity model is more relevant than ever as clients continue consolidating their partners to a fewer number of trusted ones who have the capabilities, scale, and quality delivery necessary to help drive growth and achieve efficiencies. In fact, client demand for end-to-end services, from consulting and intellectual property-based solutions to outsourcing, continues to accelerate as technology becomes core to our clients’ operations.”

CGI was founded in 1976, and is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firm in the world. They have nearly 75,000 professionals across the globe, with annual revenue of C$11.5 billion. In Germany and Northern Europe that translates to over 12,000 professionals in 83 offices across 9 countries, where CGI already serves hundreds of public and private organisations with its end-to-end IT and business consulting services, solutions and outsourcing services.

The transaction is subject to approval by Swedish and German regulators and is expected to close in Q3, 2019.