Atos Origin

Atos Origin’s management must be rubbing their hands with glee. They could not have chosen a better time to kick-start an auction for the French IT services group. In a stroke of luck, US electronic payments processing business First Data has just been sold to buyout firm KKR for some 3.8 times this year’s sales, or $29bn. That’s a juicy multiple, given the payment transactions sector typically trades on about 3 times sales. Why should this matter to Atos? The answer is that Atos has a fast-gro...