Norwegian IT Reseller Buys Top Nordic System i5 Reseller

Published: April 30, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Consolidation in the IT industry is not just happening in the United States, and it is not only occurring in the software market. For instance, last week, a prominent System i5 reseller from Norway, the Ementor Group, acquired another reseller in the Nordic region, called Informatikk, for about 92 million Norwegian krone, or about $15.3 million at current exchange rates for the U.S. dollar.

Informatikk has offices across the Nordic region, and is known as the dominant distributor of System i5 gear in the area of Europe. Specifically, Informatikk has 122 employees, who are located in offices in the Nordic cities of Oslo, Stavanger, Bergen, Aalesund, Trondheim, Goteborg, Stockholm, Malmo, Helsinki and Copenhagen.

Steinar Sonsteby, managing director of Ementor Norge, the Norwegian operations of the group, said that in the wake of the acquisition, he expected that Informatikk could continue to have profitable growth. Specifically, he said that the company would have about 400 million Norwegian krone in calendar 2007 (about $67 million) and would bring about 15 million krone to the bottom line (about $2.5 million).

"We are extremely happy to be able to include the employees of Informatikk on our team. Through this acquisition we will become an even more attractive partner for our customers," said Sonsteby. "We see a great synergy potential in addition to the results Informatikk already has presented. We will also become the largest IT supplier in the Aalesund region."

Ementor expects that Informatikk will be integrated into its operations by the third quarter of 2007, provided the Norwegian competition authorities approve the deal. Ementor itself has over 3,100 employees and operates in 48 cities in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Latvia, and has annual sales on the order of 13 billion krone, or about $2.2 billion. The company has just completed two other IT-related acquisitions, buying Danish company DMsave (which offers remote backup services) and Norwegian high-end server reseller Tre65.

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