Vendor lineage
CPM Braxis - the largest Brazilian IT services company, sold
Brazilian IT services firm acquired by Capgemini in 2010 and absorbed into its brand by 2012.
CPM Braxis was the largest Brazilian information technology services company, expecting revenue of around a billion reais in 2010 and ranked 48th that year on the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100 - the highest position a South American company had reached. In September 2010 Capgemini agreed to buy 55% of it for R$517 million, and by 2012 the name was gone.
It was assembled rather than founded, and the assembly is the interesting part. Braxis Tecnologia da Informacao - the TI Braxis of this timeline’s own working notes - was itself a union of financiers and operators: the founders of Banco Patrimonio and of Cotia Trading, joined by a former president of Ernst & Young Brazil and by Bain’s worldwide head of IT. In November 2006 Braxis acquired Unitech, an IT company founded in 1995 that had reached around a hundred million reais and some sixteen hundred staff. Four months later, in March 2007, Braxis took 33% of CPM. The result was CPM Braxis, and it reached a billion reais in revenue by 2009.
The shareholder detail explains the company. Bradesco was simultaneously its largest client and its largest shareholder, having bought Deutsche Bank’s stake earlier the same year, and it kept 20% after the sale. A services business whose biggest customer owns it is a specific arrangement with specific consequences: guaranteed volume, and a strategy set partly by a buyer who is also an owner.
The transaction structure is worth reading too. Roughly R$230 million went to shareholders and R$287 million went into the company as capital for investment and debt, so more than half the price was not a payment to anyone - it was the cost of making the business ready to be owned.
Two years later the brand was retired in favour of Capgemini alone, aligning Brazil with the other thirty-nine countries. Thirty years of trading history and six thousand people continued; the name did not, which is the ordinary ending for a national champion bought by a global one.
It was assembled rather than founded. CPM Braxis came into being in 2007 from the merger of two Brazilian service providers - CPM, constituted in 1982, and Braxis, established in 2006 - and the resulting company was itself acquired by Capgemini in October 2010, trading under the Capgemini name from October 2012. Three companies and twenty-five years of accumulated work end up inside a French group, and only the middle name survives in the record.
- Estado de S. Paulo via InvesteSP, September 2010 - Capgemini bought control of CPM Braxis for R$517 million (US$295.4 million) after four months of negotiation, taking 55% of the shares; the purchase combined R$230 million paid proportionally to shareholders with a R$287 million capital injection for investment and debt; Bradesco, CPM Braxis’s largest client and largest shareholder, retained 20% after having bought Deutsche Bank’s stake in CPM Holding in May
- MundoGEO, September 2010 - CPM Braxis described as the leading Brazilian IT services company, expecting record revenue of around R$1 billion in 2010, with a client base concentrated in financial services and telecommunications
- PR Newswire, May 2010 - CPM Braxis ranked 48th on the IAOP Global Outsourcing 100, the highest position achieved by a South American company, serving more than 200 major clients; CEO Jose Luiz Rossi
- IT Forum, October 2012 - two years after the acquisition the company dropped the CPM Braxis name for the Capgemini brand alone, in line with its other 39 countries; 30 years of activity in Brazil and more than 6,000 professionals
- Origem das Marcas, citing the formation: Braxis Tecnologia da Informacao was itself the union of the founders of Banco Patrimonio (Jair Ribeiro, Gianpaulo Baglioni) and of Cotia Trading (Paulo Brito, Alfredo DeGoeye) with the IT experience of Rogerio Igreja Brecha Junior (former president of Ernst & Young Brazil and until January 2007 a vice-president of Unisys) and David Shpilberg (worldwide head of IT at Bain); in November 2006 Braxis acquired Unitech, and in March 2007, four months later, it incorporated 33% of CPM’s voting and total capital
- Likiso Hattori, a founder of Unitech, presenting the sequence: Unitech founded 1995, reaching R$100 million and about 1,600 staff in ten years with presence in Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and the Federal District; CMMI from 2002; merger with Braxis in 2006 and with CPM in 2007, reaching R$1 billion
- Diario Oficial do Estado de Sao Paulo, 24 March 2016, publishing CPM Braxis S.A.’s administration report and financial statements for 2015: the company was founded in 2007 through the merger of two Brazilian service providers, CPM, constituted in 1982, and Braxis, established in 2006; Capgemini acquired most of the shares and became the controlling shareholder in October 2010, and the Capgemini brand was adopted in October 2012
The company’s own filed annual report in the state official gazette, which is why the lineage is precise. The founding year recorded here is CPM Braxis itself, formed by merger in 2007; CPM dates to 1982 and Braxis to 2006, and both are predecessors rather than earlier names of the same entity.