The following appeared a few hours ago.
Dream ends for iSoft with $300m buyout
- Nabila Ahmed
- From: The Australian
- March 30, 2011
WHEN Gary Cohen's IBA Health agreed to buy troubled British group iSoft in 2007, he had visions of creating one of the largest healthcare information technology providers in the world.
Cohen, who was ousted last year from the company now called iSoft, is infamous for dreaming big but delivering little.
What followed was years of underperformance that has left the share price at 5c, compared with the $1.21 it closed at on the day IBA announced its agreement with iSoft, and debt of about $260 million -- more than four and a half times its current market capitalisation.
This week, the UBS-advised iSoft is poised to be bought out by the New York-listed CSC.
It's believed IT services giant CSC, which is iSoft's biggest customer, could finalise a more than $300m takeover deal for the company as early as today. ISoft is a major supplier to the British government, which is in the midst of a pound stg. 12.7 billion ($20bn) overhaul of the National Health Service's IT systems. (CSC subcontracted iSoft to carry out the work before the IBA buyout.)
More here:
This sounds like the end. Banks get paid, little shareholders dudded and CSC gets a revenue stream and some OK software. Pretty typical in this sort of collapse!
At least the users will have continued support from a reasonably competent organisation that knows e-Health.
Sad loss for Australia, but it really was a rather large ask in retrospect.
David.
For those who knew about the process used by iSoft to develop Lorenzo, the writing was on the wall years ago. Only a complete change in engineering culture could have changed that. Plus the failure to do anything sensible with the solutions of acquired vendors. You really have to wonder about the quality of the board.
ReplyDeleteThe board has been staffed by buffoons for years now. And it seems that company insiders have taken one last opportunity to thumb their nose at shareholders....check out a chart of the ISF.AX price from 21st March (3c) until the trading halt (5c). If that's not blatant insider trading then I'm not sure what is.
ReplyDeleteCSC announced overnight the purchase of iSoft for 0.17 cents per share...subject to regulatory and shareholder approvals.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.csc.com/newsroom/press_releases/62638-csc_enters_into_agreement_to_acquire_isoft_s_global_operations
Those who were around when CSC owned MDIS (the forerunner to iSOFT, will be feeling a bit of deja vu!
Did not know iSoft had an engineering culture. Lorenzo is the first product they have tried to develop themselves, although I think they out sourced most of it to a subsidiary in the sub continent.
ReplyDeleteAll the other products they picked up when the original developers had busted their boilers with developing the product, marketing the product, trying to get development capital, etc. iSoft just picked up the product and milked the maintenance fees. They are not alone in that - there are a couple of other big companies that have had a similar modus operandi at times.
Nothing wrong with that - that's business. CSC knows how to play he game.
ReplyDelete