Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., one of Japan's premier conglomerates and the former telephone monopoly in the Asian superpower, announced on Monday that it has agreed to acquire Dell Inc.'s IT services division in a massive $3-billion deal. The deal, if successful and finalized, would be NTT Data Corp.'s largest deal to date, as the Asian conglomerate attempts to breach the overseas market.
According to NTT Data's announcement, the expected price of the deal is valued at about $3.05 billion. The amount, however, does not include debt as well as any other unspecified advisory fees.
Of course, with the acquisition, NTT Data would be able to enjoy a much larger foothold in the all-important market in the West. For some time now, the Japanese conglomerate has been putting a lot of effort into expanding its health care IT, insurance and financial services consulting.
The deal does not only benefit the Japanese giant, however, as Dell is also set to walk away from the deal with a significant gain. Most prominent of these would be the funds that would be gained from the deal.
With the profits from the sale, Dell would be able to significantly trim a portion of the massive $43 billion in debt that the company is taking on in order to fund its largest and most ambitious acquisition to date, Dell's pursuit of EMC Corp. Analysts have pegged the Dell-EMC deal to be worth almost $60 billion.
With Dell actively pursuing an acquisition of its own, several of its businesses, including its IT services unit, would ultimately become redundant. After all, Dell's IT services division, which was acquired by Dell in 2009 under the name Perot Systems, is a business targeted at providing technology consulting to government offices and hospitals.
If ever Dell's plan pans out and it does manage to successfully acquire EMC, such businesses would indeed be redundant, considering the size and scope of EMC Corp.'s businesses.
Dell's IT services division is not the only business being sold by the computer-maker, however, as Dell is also allegedly planning to sell Quest Software, a business which is aimed at developing information technology management systems. Dell is also allegedly looking at selling SonicWall, a business involving email encryption and other data security services.
Analysts believe that the planned sale of SonicWall and Quest Software is set to net Dell up to $4 billion. If Dell does manage to sell the businesses successfully, it would be able to take yet another significant step towards acquiring its biggest prize.
