16 July 2008

Reply S.p.A. – listed at STAR segment of the Italian Stock Exchange [REY.MI] – today announced that it has acquired 100% capital share of glue:, a company specializing in Enterprise Architecture, Solution Design and SOA consulting services.

The acquisition allows Reply to extend its own related specialist consulting and delivery offerings to the UK market besides Italy and Germany.

glue: - leader in its field - works for leading organizations within the Telco & Media, Manufacturing, Insurance and Retail markets such as: Argos, Axa, BBC, Boots, BSkyB, Cable & Wireless, Carphone Warehouse, Fosters, GlaxoSmithKline, J&J, Kraft Foods, Liverpool & Victoria, Marks & Spencer, Unilever, WH Smiths.

glue: forecasts, for the current year, a 10 million GBP revenue with an EBT margin of 13.5%.

The overall investment for Reply amounts to 9 million GBP, of which 2.5 million GBP financed through a reserved increase of capital.

glue: will maintain its own autonomy as part of Reply’s network. Following Reply’s business model and philosophy the current managing directors - Gareth Lloyd and Stuart Lowe – will become Reply shareholders and will continue to lead glue:. Together with Reply’s management, they will have the task of expanding the Group’s presence in the UK market.

“We have been first mover – declared Mario Rizzante, Reply’s Chairman – in believing and investing into the new integration architectures based on services, gaining to be recognized by the market among the leaders in this sector for competence and quality of the solutions that we provide our clients”.

“glue: - continues Mario Rizzante – which is characterized by an outstanding reputation and for the excellence of its solutions, further potentiates our Architecture, Application Integration and BPM offerings - sectors that are demonstrating to be more and more important for those companies defining new business models enabled by SOA and the 2.0 paradigm”.

“This operation – concludes Mario Rizzante – strengthens the position of Reply in Europe, where we already have a solid presence in Italy and Germany, and starting from today in Great Britain too, a market with an enormous potential for us”.

“Being part of the Reply Group is just what is needed for glue: to accelerate its growth plans. Our clients and employees will benefit from having access to a deeper pool of consulting and delivery expertise and to business process, technology capabilities and a geographic reach that would otherwise have taken glue: many years to develop on its own”, said Gareth Lloyd, CEO and co-founder of glue:.

Contacts:

Reply
Fabio Zappelli
Phone +39.011.77.11.594
E-mail: f.zappelli@reply.it

glue: ltd
Sharon Rooney
Phone +44.1628.481553
E-mail: Srooney@glueltd.com


About the companies

REPLY
Reply [REY.MI] is specialized in design and implementation of solutions based on new digital media and communication channels. Operating through a network of highly focused companies, Reply provides the leading European Groups in the Telco & Media, Manufacturing and Services, Banking and Insurance Industries as well as the Public Sector with an effective support aimed at defining and developing business models enabled by the Web 2.0 and by the convergence paradigms. Reply services include: Consultancy, System Integration, Application Management and Business Process Outsourcing.

Founded in 1996, Reply closed 2007 with consolidated sales of 277.2 million (+20.4%), EBITDA was 42.3 million (+34.4%) and EBIT 38.0 million (+36.5%), while the result before taxes was 37.8 million (+35.9%). Reply [Rey.MI] since december 2000 is listed on Borsa Italiana Star Market.

Reply Company Profile
- download English version
- download Italian version


GLUE: LTD
glue: is UK’s leading consulting services organisation focused exclusively on optimising IT/Business alignment and minimising the cost of business and IT technology change. Our core proposition is to help organisations maximize the value from their change and technology investments by helping them define, design, implement and resource ’best practice’:

• enterprise architecture and business/technology change management processes, roadmaps and competencies;
• business design and process management initiatives;
• SOA, integration and data management platforms.

For further information: www.glueltd.com