Orange announced that its subsidiary Orange Business Services (OBS) is to acquire 100 percent of the capital of Basefarm, a Northern European IT provider of cloud-based infrastructure and managed services, for an enterprise value of EUR 350 million. The transaction, expected to close in the third quarter, follows a competitive tender process by private equity investment firm Abry Partners for its stake in the company. OBS said that the acquisition aims to extend its geographical reach in the public and private cloud market, particularly in the field of Big Data and critical application management services.
Basefarm has 550 employees and revenues of over EUR 100 million in 2017. The company has a strong presence in Northern Europe, particularly across Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In mid-2017, it acquired The Unbelievable Machine Company (trading under the *um brand), a service provider for Big Data, cloud and managed cloud services operating in Germany and Austria.