Japan’s NTT Offering £2.5bn For Dell’s Perot Systems

Japanese telco NTT (Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp) is eyeing up Dell’s IT consulting and services division Perot Systems for $3.5 billion (£2.5bn), according sources speaking to Nikkei Asian Review.

The purchase, if it goes through, will bolster NTT’s overseas business, with Dell’s Perot Systems hauling in around $3 billion (£2.1bn) in revenue annually.

Debt offloader

Dell acquired Perot Systems in 2009, but late last year sources revealed that Dell was looking to offload Perot Systems as part of a debt reduction strategy following Dell’s EMC acquisition.

Dell was also said to be in negotiations with US-based Cognizant and France’s Atos regarding a sale of Perot Systems.

Perot Systems, founded in 1988 by former US presidential candidate Ross Perot, provides IT consulting to hospitals and government departments.

Dell was hoping to bring in more than $5 billion from the sale in order to help reduce the $49.5 billion in debt it currently expects to have following the acquisition of EMC, but last December, Reuters sources said confidential negotiations have taken longer than expected because the offers haven’t met Dell’s expectations.

For NTT, which gets just 14 percent of its revenues from outside of Japan, a purchase would boost its IT services offering in the US, as the company looks to compete with Accenture and IBM.

TechWeekEurope has contacted both Dell and NTT for comment.

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