Content area
Full text
"It's a done deal," Larry Davis said jubilantly.
Less than an hour earlier, Davis, the chairman and founder of phone company Tech Valley Communications Inc., closed the deal that would result in his taking control of a new company spun off from Aptis Inc. - a company he will call CommSoft, the name of the telecommunications software firm he started in 1985.
Backed by the New York Citybased private equity firm Saratoga Partners, which runs a $750 million fund, the deal was finalized Feb. 16.
Details have not been released, but Davis said, "What I bought it back for was a fraction of what I sold it for."
The deal had been in negotiations since November, he said, but former clients began contacting him even sooner.
"I was recruited by a majority of the clients," he said, noting that representatives from more than 35 companies called him over the year, saying, "Please come back."
Davis, 43, celebrated with close friends the night the deal was finalized, and on the following Monday donned a faded blue rugby shirt with the CommSoft logo and told the remaining 45 Aptis employees in Albany that he planned to keep them and hoped to grow the company to more than 100.
"It's kind of like going back to where we were six years ago and growing the company again," he said. 'I'm ecstatic. I'm energized."
He said he was excited that the company will be headquartered in the Albany area once again.
Davis sold Communications Software Consultants Inc., or CommSoft, to Billing Concepts Corp. of San Antonio in 1998 for $36 million. Billing Concepts turned CommSoft and two other companies into its Aptis subsidiary in 1999. Aptis had around 320 employees, about 110 located on the third and fourth floors of 8 Southwoods Blvd....