Wipro backs out of buying back office in US

Indian IT major Wipro Ltd's bid to acquire the US-based back office firm Viteos Group for $130 million (Rs 861 crore) fell through due to delay in closing the deal, the company said on Tuesday.

"Both parties have decided not to proceed ahead with the acquisition due to inordinate delay in completing closing conditions that exceeded the target date and expiration date under the terms of the agreement," the software major said in a statement here.

The deal was to be completed in fourth quarter of 2015-16 ending March 31.

Headquartered at Somerset in New Jersey, Viteos provides customised straight-through-processing and integrates post-trade operations across asset class, currency, border or structure for the alternative investment management industry in the US, Europe and Asia.

As a leader in shadow-accounting services, Viteos offers a range of middle and back-office outsourcing through its 400 employees.

The city-based outsourcing major was keen on buying out Viteos, as the IT services industry is moving to an 'as-a-service' model and the future of BPS (business process service) is going to be BPaaS (business process as-a-service), which is a business process outsourcing run as a cloud service.

"Our strategy is to invest in industry vertical platforms which will provide platform-based services to our clients in transaction or outcome-based pricing models. Viteos will further our strategy in the capital markets domain," said Wipro chief executive for finance solutions Shaji Farooq in a statement here on December 23 when the deal was announced.

Viteos, founded by Indian-born chief executive Shankar Iyer, licenses its proprietary platform to offer transformation and integration of post-trade operations.

--IANS

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