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IT management giant DXC confirms takeover interest

No formal offer yet received, Baring Private Equity Asia linked with ailing IT services house

BPO and IT services multi-national DXC Technology has confirmed it is in contact with a "financial sponsor" that is interested in buying the business, amid indications that Baring Private Equity Asia is the suitor.

DXC Technology was created in 2017 when CSC and Hewlett Packard Enterprise merged, but the combined scale has failed to stop the business shrinking as customers switch to the cloud.

The beleaguered outsourcing, consulting, and infrastructure services provider was understood to have brought in advisors last month following an expression of interest in the company. At least one private equity specialist was understood to be involved.

DXC, which previously refused to comment on the moves, has now gone public, saying that "management has been approached by a financial sponsor regarding a potential acquisition of the company."

"Management remains focused on the company's transformation journey. Consistent with its fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder value, the company is engaged in preliminary discussions."

No formal offer has yet been received to date, DXC said, and "there are no assurances that any proposal will be received or determined to be adequate by the board of directors." No further comment will be made until DXC "deems additional disclosure to be appropriate or required."

According to a report in Bloomberg, DXC is negotiating with Baring PE, which has gathered $11.2 billion in capital to invest. The equity house was itself bought by EQT Partners in March for $7.5 billion. It currently has 45 portfolio companies across Asia with in excess of 300,000 employees and sales of circa $41 billion.

Since its creation five years ago, DXC has shrunk from a $24.55 billion business in its fiscal 2018 to $16.26 billion in fiscal 2022.

The cause of that plunge in turnover is customers switching to the cloud and signing fewer big ticket outsourcing agreements with traditional infrastructure services providers. DXC isn't alone in this respect, with IBM offloading its related business, Kyndryl, last year and Atos now forced to restructure.

Atos, which was briefly interested in buying DXC last year, was itself approached by ambitious rival Onepoint last week but spurned those advances.

Atos is being carved in two by senior management with digital, big data and security divisions to be funneled into a new publicly traded entity called Evidian, and the remaining units, which aren't growing, including hosting, datacenter, BPO, unified comms and digital workplace to be based in a Tech Foundation Co. ®

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