Atos Origin S.A.

International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 69 (1998) by M. Cohen

Atos Origin S.A.

Immeuble Les Miroirs 18, avenue d'Alsace 92926 Paris La Défense Cedex France Telephone: 33 1 55 91 20 00 Fax: 33 1 55 91 20 05 Web site: http://www.atosorigin.com

Public Company Incorporated: 2000 Employees: 26,473 Sales: EUR 5.3 billion ($6 billion) (2004) Stock Exchanges: Euronext Paris Ticker Symbol: ATO NAIC: 541611 Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services

Atos Origin S.A. has emerged as Europe's third largest IT services company, and ranks among the world's top 20 IT consultancy companies. Atos Origin is a full-service systems integration provider in three primary areas: consulting, systems integration, and managed operations. The company focuses particularly on the following markets: financial services; consumer packaged goods/retail; discrete manufacturing; process industries; telecoms, media, and utilities; and the public sector. Major customers include ABN AMRO; BNP Paribas; Euronext; PPR; Procter & Gamble; Unilever; Alstom, BMW, and Renault; Akzo Nobel, Schlumberger, and Shell; France Telecom; KPN and Telecom Italia; and the French Ministry of Education and the UK Metropolitan police. Atos Origin is highly focused on Europe, which accounted for 90 percent of its EUR 5.3 billion ($6 billion) in revenues in 2004. France remains the company's single largest market, at 27 percent of sales, while the U.K. and Benelux markets each add about 20 percent. Managed operations, such as IT systems for the 2004 and 2008 Olympic Games, represent 50 percent of the group's sales, and systems integration adds 41 percent. Consulting, the company's newest area of operation, adds 9 percent to sales. Atos Origin is the result of a string of acquisitions, including the purchase of KPMG Consulting in 2002 and SchlumbergerSema in 2004. Atos Origin is listed on the Euronext Paris Stock Exchange.

Early French IT Entrants in the 1970s

Although Atos Origin itself was formed in 2000 through the merger of France's Atos and The Netherlands' Origin, its own origins reached back to the earliest days of the information technology market. A result of a long series of mergers and acquisitions, Atos Origin emerged as a major European IT company, before joining the ranks of the global leaders in the mid-2000s.

The first major merger leading toward the later Atos Origin occurred in 1972, when French management systems pioneer Cegos Informatique, founded in 1962 as part of the Cegos consultancy, merged with Sliga, the subsidiary responsible for the growing data processing operations of Crédit Lyonnais, formed in 1970. The merged company was then named Sligos, with Crédit Lyonnais retaining majority control.

Sligos grew into one of France's leading IT companies during the 1970s. A major factor in the company's success was its participation in the development of the country's banking card system. In 1973, Sligos was chosen by the country's bank to develop the data processing backbone for the proposed Carte Bleue, which allowed credit card-like purchases throughout the country. By 1975, Sligos's system processed some 2.5 million transactions per year—a number that was to increase to more than 30 million per year by 1980. The development of the microchip permitted Sligos, which also began fabricating cards, to roll out electronic "smart" card processing systems during the 1980s. By the end of that decade, the Carte Bleue system had been extended nationwide, and the company's card production neared 50 million cards.

Sligos went public in 1986, and then, at the end of the decade, began expanding beyond France. By the early 1990s, Sligos had entered the United Kingdom through its purchase of Signet in 1991, and Germany through the Marben Group, as well as Italy and Spain. Into the mid-1990s, Sligos began a restructuring, exiting a number of operations, including the production of smart cards, in order to refocus its business around a core of systems integration services.

By then, the French IT industry was in the midst of a long consolidation effort, which saw the emergence of a small number of larger groups capable of competing on a European, and even global, scale. Among these groups was Axime, which proposed to merge with Sligos in 1996.

Axime stemmed from the creation of Sodinforg in 1981 by four associates at the Centre Technique Régionale Carte Bleue in Nancy. That company grew quickly through the 1980s, making a number of acquisitions, including Perbanq in 1984, Sedap in 1986, Segime Industrie in 1987, and Stratégie Informatique in 1989. By the end of the 1980s Sodinforg had become France's third largest smart card systems developer.

In 1991, Sodinforg agreed to merge with the number four in the French market, Segin, and another important IT services group, SITB. The merged company, led by Bernard Bourigeaud, then underwent a restructuring to focus on three core operations: electronic transaction processing; software engineering; and systems integration. As part of its restructuring, Axime sold off a number of businesses, including its check personalization and POS terminal businesses, representing some 50 percent of its total revenues.