Virtusa To Be Acquired In $2 Billion Private Equity Play

The large global IT services provider will join several other global IT solution providers that are partially or wholly owned by Baring Private Equity Asia.

Virtusa, a large global IT services provider, has signed a definitive merger agreement under which it will be acquired by a private equity firm, Baring Private Equity Asia, in an all-cash deal worth about $2.0 billion.

Under the terms of the deal, which was unveiled Thursday, funds affiliated with Baring Private Equity Asia, a Hong Kong-based private equity company, will acquire Southborough, Mass.-based Virtusa for $51.25 per share, which represents a premium of about 27 percent over Wednesday’s closing share price for Virtusa.

Baring Private Equity Asia, or BPEA, was founded in 1997 and has about $20 billion of assets under management. The company has offices throughout China and the rest of Asia, and has invested in over 100 companies since it was founded.

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Among BPEA’s 41 current portfolio companies are a few IT-focused companies including CitiusTech, a Princeton, N.J.-based provider of health-care technology and business services; Coforge, a Noida, India-based global IT solutions and services company formerly known as NIIT Technologies; and Hexaware Technologies, a Mumbai, India-based provider of global IT consulting and digital solutions.

Virtusa works with a wide range of vendor partners to provide digital strategy, digital engineering, and IT services and solutions. Key relationships include Amazon Web Services Premier, Google Cloud Premier and Microsoft Azure Gold partnerships. Among its employees are over 100 cloud- trained and -certified engineers and SaaS consultants, the company said on its website.

Virtusa’s core services include consulting and systems design, application engineering, analytics and data, digital process automation, enterprise application integration, cloud services and managed services.

Virtusa is No. 38 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500.

Virtusa declined to speak with CRN about the planned deal for the time being.

However, Kris Canekeratne, Virtusa chairman and CEO, said in a prepared statement that the acquisition is a unique opportunity to take its business to new heights at a time of accelerating digital adoption.

“BPEA has an exemplary track record of valuing innovative and talented global teams and supporting and empowering the businesses in which it invests. With a strong partner in BPEA, we will solidify our position at the forefront of digital transformation for years to come,” Canekeratne said in the statement.

The acquisition is slated to close in the first half of 2021.