OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 4.50pm
DIMENSION Data, the country’s biggest information technology group, said on Thursday it will apply for a listing on the London Stock Exchange.
Didata chairman Jeremy Ord said the move has been propted by the criteria laid out in Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s budget speech.
He said he is confident the company has a strong case to apply for a listing offshore based on the criteria laid out by Manuel.
The company expects to have received the necessary approval before the end of the year. The listing should then become a reality four months later, Ord said.
In his 2000 budget presented on Wednesday, Manuel announced new criteria for South African companies wanting to shift their primary listing abroad, criteria corporates have been waiting on for more than a year.
Didata, the world’s largest independent network services company, has a strong presence in the United Kingdom and Europe and is now looking to build a footprint in the United States. Management has said before that a US acquisition is in the pipeline.
In December, it bought the European networking operations of another rival, Comparex, for 250 million Didata shares, or about $1,2-billion, further strengthening its growing international presence.
Underpinning Didata’s ambitions in the US is its close alliance with Cisco Systems, the world’s largest maker of switches and routers, the power behind the Internet. Didata’s early ability to build a strong presence in South Africa was partly reliant on an exclusive supply contract it signed with Cisco.– Reuters