Amadeus is set to buy German corporate travel IT firm i:FAO Group in a deal worth £65 million.
Amadeus to buy German IT firm
Amadeus is set to buy German corporate travel IT firm i:FAO Group in a deal worth £65 million.
If regulators in Germany approve the purchase, Amadeus will acquire a 68.5% share in the publicly listed company.
The i:FAO Group sells travel management technology to corporations and is traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Holger Taubmann, Amadeus’ senior vice president for distribution, said the deal would help the company grow in the corporate travel IT marketplace.
“Corporations are one of the biggest consumers of travel services, and account for about 45% of all trips made worldwide,” he said.
Louis Arnitz, the founder and chief executive of the i:FAO Group, said the company was growing in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Central Europe, having already established itself across the German-speaking nations, Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
He said global end-to-end travel IT solutions were increasingly important for multinational corporations.
“Becoming part of a truly global leader in the travel industry with Amadeus will allow us to develop the ability to meet our customers’ requirements worldwide,” he predicted.
Taubmann estimated the global corporate travel IT business to be worth between £1.7 billion and 2.4 billion annually.
The i:FAO Group is headquartered in Frankfurt and has its main development site in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Some 170 staff will join Amadeus when the sale in complete.
