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Deal 5: Head of Strategy Eugene Peskin on IBS's Acquisition of Aplana

Deal 5: Head of Strategy Eugene Peskin on IBS's Acquisition of Aplana

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On December 18, 2019, CEE Legal Matters reported that NSP had advised IBS IT Holding on its acquisition of Aplana Software from the Aplana Group. We reached out to Eugene Peskin, Head of Strategy at IBS, for more details.

CEELM: To start, what is Aplana Software, and what was the business case behind the acquisition?

Peskin: Aplana Software is a leading Russian software testing company that provides software testing services to blue-chip Russian companies, in banking and other industries where the software development cycle is fast and demanding, while quality is a superior requirement. The business complements nicely our portfolio of B2B IT services, and bringing Aplana in fits IBS's overall strategy of increasing services share of our revenue and profitability.

CEELM: What was the most complex/challenging aspect of this transaction and how did you deal with it?

Peskin: For several reasons this transaction effectively had a very limited time window -- if we hadn't been able to meet the deadline the deal could have fallen apart. To address that we assigned two top managers to our acquisition team (which included the CFO and me) and tasked them with resolving the most complex issues overnight (naturally within the mandate from our board) to them.

CEELM: What aspects of the deal were handled by your in-house team and which did you externalize to your outside counsel?

Peskin: For this particular deal we heavily relied on our outside counsel. 

CEELM: Why did you pick NSP specifically for this deal?

Peskin: We have previously worked with NSP on several projects, and, as time was of the essence, we capitalized on our good working rapport with the NSP team.

CEELM: What, if any, are the steps that you and your team need to take to consider this matter closed from a legal input perspective?

Peskin: From a legal point the transaction is accomplished. We have entered the integration phase and we also are gradually switching our brand to IBS Appline (registration pending).

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