Irish Software Company Acquires Dene International

[London, ENGLAND] Ireland’s IFS, a developer of Internet
solutions for financial companies, announced Wednesday the
US $21 million dollar acquisition of Dene International, a
U.K. firm that develops automated Internet-based trading
solutions for banks.

The deal brings a key product to IFS, namely Dene’s
Global Automated Trading Engine (GATE), reputedly one
of the world’s leading automated foreign exchange trading
applications. GATE users include Barclays, Bank of America,
Chase Manhattan, Natwest and Allied Irish Banks.

IFS plans to merge GATE with its own MarginMan risk management
and collateralized foreign exchange trading application
to form a complete ASP environment that will bring more
benefits to both sets of customers.

“Dene’s GATE technology will allow IFS to fast track the
migration of our MarginMan collateralized trading application
to the Internet and to offer a superior range of automated
Internet trading solutions via an ASP model to our existing
clients and to the global FX market in general,” said
Ken Coldrick, managing director, IFS.

Bob Beese, managing director, Dene International, predicted
that the combined company would emerge as the leading developer
of Internet trading solutions within the next two years.

“We can now take advantage of IFS’ global sales, marketing
and support infrastructure to promote our flagship product,
GATE, and anticipate a considerable increase in our combined
revenues as a result,” Beese said.

Dene currently employs 30 people at its U.K. headquarters
in Harrogate, Yorkshire, while IFS has more than 80 people
working in its offices in Dublin, London, New York, Singapore,
Sydney and Manila.

The expanded company says it plans to conduct a major recruitment
campaign over the next six months to increase its sales,
research and development teams.

Intel Corp. and Deutsche Bank took a joint stake of 14 percent in
IFS in June last year.