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Driven into each other's arms by an ailing market, Atlanta-based software companies SynQuest Inc. and Viewlocity Inc. have merged and acquired a third rival on the verge of shutting down.
The newly combined company will also pick up as much as $30 million in fresh cash from all three entities' institutional investors, including those backing Boston-based Tilion Inc. The venture capital will help the merged company, SynQuest, step up the fight for the battered supply-chain services sector.
The deal provides long-sought strategic crossover between crosstown peers SynQuest and Viewlocity, which share a market base but few competitive conflicts. The deal also preserves a tough-to- acquire public listing from Nasdaq-traded SynQuest in what is expected to be the final funding to profitability.
New SynQuest CEO Jeffrey Simpson said Viewlocity's focus on event- triggered supply chain transaction management and SynQuest's concentration on supply-chain planning had long been seen as complementary, but that initial merger talks three years ago were thwarted because of the high valuations placed on the companies during the initial B2B e-commerce frenzy. But now that SynQuest's stock has been beaten down from a high of $165 in October 2000 to a...