i-Flex eyeing strategic buyouts in financial sevices, says CMD R Hukku

14 August 2006

i-Flex Solutions has just announced an acquisition of a risk solution provider, Mantas in the US and it believes that with this acquisition, they it be able to add to their anti-money laundering solutions and package. (See: i-Flex to acquire US company Mantas for $122.6 million)

Rajesh Hukku, CMD, i-Flex Solutions, says that the Mantas deal will be EPS accretive this year on a non-GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) basis.

He adds that the company is always looking at strategic acquisitions in the financial services business. He further states that the surveillance market is large and their focus is on increasing market share. CNBC-TV18 shares with domain-b its exclusive interview with Hukku:

Can you tell us what this brings to your plate of offers?
We are excited because risk and compliance are becoming one of the hottest and the most important areas for banks and financial institutions worldwide. We have a product called Reveleus, which handles operational risk and analytics credit risk and with Mantas, we bring in anti-money laundering, detection and surveillance. This completes the whole risk and compliance picture that we offer worldwide.

Reveleus has really gained top tier customers like Wells Fargo, Wachovia, CitiBank in the US and Mantas also comes with top tier customers like ABN AMRO and Merrill Lynch. So the combination of these two should be a leadership in the space of risk and compliance.

Could you comment on the preferential allotment that you have done in terms of the money that you have used, instead of doing this deal through your balance sheet?
The whole deal is pretty large for our side. It is $122.6 million and the board evaluated various options of taking a loan or using the balance sheet or doing a rights issue. But we are in a unique position where we have the support of Oracle and they feel that this is a good deal for us, so they agreed to basically take it at a preferential allotment.