Lawson Software – Infor Acquisition Target

Posted by admin on April 28, 2011 under ERP Software | Be the First to Comment

With the economy starting to look a little brighter, look for more acquisitions, unsolicited acquisition offers, and, potentially, some heated bidding wars.

For example, in 2010 Lawson Software acquired Enwisen, a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) human resources solution provider and Healthvision Solutions, a solutions provider to the hospital and healthcare markets. Then in March 2011, Lawson itself received an unsolicited bid from privately held software company, Infor and Golden Gate Capital. Lawson’s board retained Barclays Capital, Inc. to assist in evaluating the proposal, as well as other strategic alternatives. Another interesting twist is that billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been acquiring Lawson stock and now owns about one-tenth of Lawson.

The good news for Lawson is that its fiscal 3rd quarter net income rose sharply. Acquiring Lawson would be an excellent strategic move for Infor because it would fill an Infor gap for a strong enterprise financial and HR/Payroll solution, particularly for the government, utilities, healthcare and financial services markets. While it continues its discussions with Infor and Golden Gate, Lawson is also in a strong position to entertain other bids.

I suspect that other companies may be going after Lawson (if they haven’t already done so), too, for a variety of reasons. In addition to Infor, it seems that Lawson would be a likely acquisition candidate for companies such as IBM (to maintain control of one of only a handful of Tier 1/2 solutions that support DB2), Microsoft, Oracle and SAP.

Posted By: Trisha Tubbs