SAP buys Concur in a $8.3 billion deal
German software giant SAP SE (SAP +1.08%) agreed to buy Concur Technologies Inc., (CNQR +0.31%) which makes software to help employees manage their expense accounts, in a deal valued at $8.3 billion.
Concur shareholders would receive $129 per share, a 20% premium over Wednesday’s closing price of $107.80.
The deal is the largest in SAP’s history, according to Dealogic, ranking above its $7.1 billion acquisition of Sybase Inc. in 2010.
Most of the software SAP sells today, managing everything from companies’ supply chains to their financial ledgers, is integrated directly into those companies’ computer systems.
Cloud software companies have been growing more quickly than their rivals that sell software “on-premise” thanks to the ease with which their software can be updated and the lower up front cost of integration.
“There’s a desperate race for cloud scale,” said Mark Moerdler, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. “Everyone needs to be big, hopefully they’ll gain scale efficiency out of it.”
SAP Chief Executive Bill McDermott, the first American to run the company, said the addition of Concur would mean its business network will now handle transactions totaling more than $600 billion annually.
Source: WSJ- SAP buys Concur in a $8.3 billion deal
