BASF AG has made no secret that it has been prospecting for a partner for its Comparex Informationssysteme GmbH IBMulator marketing company, and it reckons it has struck oil with South African Persetel Holdings Pty Ltd, which will take a 40% stake in Comparex for an undisclosed sum. The deal has clearly been cooking for some time because Comparex last year announced an alliance in Germany with the new partner’s Persetel Networks Ltd subsidiary (CI No 2,644). Comparex chairman Rolf Brillinger says that BASF looked for a partner with expertise in mainframes that had already diversified into systems integration and services. The company had to be large enough to share responsibility and liability, but small enough to accept BASF as the controlling partner. Persetel, it said, was the only company that fitted all of the criteria. The reseller of Hitachi Ltd mainframes has around 40% market share in South Africa and counts Acer Inc – with which it has a joint venture – and the UK’s Cray Electronics Plc among its other partners. It has also been in open systems, networking and services since 1990. It had revenues last year of some $200m and employs 800 staff. Comparex is looking to its new partner to open up the South African and the US markets, where Persetel already has a presence, and to help it move further into Eastern Europe, where the South African’s experience in migrating customers from ICL Plc or Burroughs Corp systems to IBM Corp mainframes will be invaluable to Comparex, it said. Persetel is 29%-owned by the Barlow industrial group.
