Fujitsu Services has signed its biggest-ever contract in Germany, capturing a 400m-euro ($544m), five-year deal with financial services group Allianz.
The vendor will serve as the main provider of desktop, network, and telecoms services, including supply, installation, support, and maintenance to Allianz’s internal IT services division AGIS. The latter will retain overall responsibility for projects, billing, and engineering.
In what is still a relatively rare event in the German IT services market, the client will transfer 500 staff from AGIS across to the supplier. Tougher local laws have traditionally prevented the sort of staff and asset transfer outsourcing relationships that are commonplace in the US and UK from taking place in Germany.
Fujitsu Services said the win gave further justification to its $108m takeover of German SAP services vendor TDS at the end of last year, which significantly increased its scale in the country. Allianz said that Fujitsu’s commitment to growing its German business was a factor in the selection process as its main concern was the prospects of the transferred staff.
Meanwhile, Fujitsu Services’ $570m takeover target GFI Informatique has postponed the date of its EGM on which shareholders will vote on whether to accept Fujitsu’s bid or a rival funding proposition led by venture capital group Apax Partners. The meeting, previously scheduled for May 21, will now take place on June 29.