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Sage poised for huge Italian buy

New boss plots €650m bid

The recently installed chief executive of Sage is planning a massive bid for Italian business management firm TeamSystem.

The deadline for bids is tomorrow but Sage looks likely to beat two private equity groups for control of the firm.

Sage will offer £542m (€650m), outbidding offers from private equity firms HgCapital and Cinven, the FT reports.

Sage's new chief executive, Guy Berruyer, who only took over in mid-July having previously run the accountancy specialist's European and Asian business, will presumably get the credit if the deal goes through, though we're guessing the bid has been in preparation for some time.

Sage said yesterday that trading was in line with expectations, and organic growth was strengthening.

The Newcastle-based company has made a series of buys in recent years, but all of these were on a much smaller scale.

TeamSystems makes enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, HR systems as well as storage and archiving products.

Earlier this week Reuters reported that Sage was itself the target of a takeover from Hitachi. ®

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