Italy's Reply to press ahead with M&A for further growth
MILAN, July 4 (Reuters) - Italy’s digital services group Reply intends to grow further through mergers and acquisitions with a focus on Europe and the U.S., the company’s chairman and co-CEO told Reuters on Wednesday. The Turin-based group, which had sales of just under 900 million euros last year, bought U.S. digital consultancy Valorem in April and Germany’s CSPI last week.
“We will press on with M&A but we want to avoid transformational deals, acquiring competences focused on our core business,” said chairman and co-CEO Mario Rizzante, whose family holding company Alika owns just over 45 percent of the company.
The group looks mainly at Europe and the U.S. and sees in the latter an “enormous opportunity” but rules out investments in emerging countries.
“From a point of view of scale and logistics it doesn’t make sense to invest in emerging countries,” Tatiana Rizzante, co-chief executive, said. (Reporting by Massimo Gaia, writing by Giulia Segreti)