Schneider Electric, a France-based energy management major, will acquire majority stake in APW President Systems, a Bangalore-based manufacturer of racks and enclosure systems, mainly for the information technology and telecom sectors.
Schneider Electric will acquire 75 per cent in APW, both the 55 per cent owned by the promoters and another 20 per cent through a mandatory open offer to be made to the other shareholders, said a statement.
Schneider Electric will pay Rs 62.2 crore for acquiring the promoter stake, at Rs 195 per share. Following the announcement, share prices of APW rose five per cent on the Bombay stock Exchange, to Rs 157 per share.
APW has approximately 380 employees and generated sales of Rs 108 crore for the year ending September 30, 2010. The 27-year-old company has manufacturing facilities at Pune and Bangalore and a broad customer base, with sales and marketing offices across India.
“APW President Systems brings to us the expertise to customise racks and enclosures for our global data centre customer base. With this acquisition, Schneider Electric becomes a leading Indian player in integrated data centre infrastructure solutions and accelerates its development in the domain of data centres,” said Laurent Vernerey, executive vice-president of Schneider Electric’s IT business.
In 2009, Schneider Electric had acquired Bangalore-based Meher Capacitors, which makes power factor correction capacitors and another Bangalore-based company, Conzerv Systems, which operates in the energy efficiency market.
