Ascential Software is to buy data integration rival Mercator for $106 million cash.
Mercator's shares jumped 20% on the news to $2.95, just shy of Ascential's $3 per share premium.
Ascential claims the combined operation will be the largest independent enterprise data integration software company with current annualised revenues of approximately $250 million, 3000 customers and 900 employees.
Peter Gyenes chairman and CEO, Ascential Software, says: "Mercator's offerings are widely recognised for their ability to address high-performance, real-time, complex data integration requirements and are a natural complement to our offerings."
Meractor's expertise is in data transformation and routing, while Ascential majors in data profiling and meta data management.
The bid comes just three months after Mercator fought off a proxy bid from Strategic Software Holdings and coincides with the publication of another disappointing set of results from the middleware firm. Mercator is reporting a a second quarter net loss of $9.2 million, compared to $8.3 million a year earlier, and $4.3 million in the previous period. Total revenues fell more than 18% to $22 million, as key software license revenues declined almost 44% to $6.1 million.
Ascential says it expects the acquisition to add to earnings within its first year of combined operations, as a result of cost synergies, cross-selling opportunities and new revenue streams resulting from the companies' complementary products, channels, and geographic presence.