Integreon buys US legal BPO firm

Posted August 04, 2008

AYALA-owned Integreon Managed Solutions Inc. has acquired New York-based Datum Legal, Inc., a leading litigation support and electronic data discovery (EDD) company for $10 million.

The acquisition, which was completed on June 3, was backed by equity infusion from parent firm LiveIt, the investment arm of Ayala Corp. in the business process outsourcing (BPO) sector.

In press briefing Wednesday, Integreon chairman Alfredo Ayala said the acquisition is an important move for the company as it is in the process of expanding its services.

“Where are we today? We are now a trusted provider of law firms and general counsels. That’s a very difficult place to get in because all of these guys treat all of this information as extremely confidential. So this is mission-critical. But we are already in that trusted space,” he said.

The acquisition of Datum Legal is expected to further strengthen Integreon’s footing in the legal BPO industry.

“Integreon can now offer an integrated discovery management solution with guaranteed fixed-price per document. Furthermore, corporations and law firms can now deal with a single point-of-contract for all the key elements of an e-discovery case, including professional services, data reduction through analytics, processing, hosting and attorney review,” said country head Erik Tabuena.

Datum Legal, he added, dominates the EDD market in the US. The process starts when the client sends electronic data and Datum trims it using its technology. It specializes in litigation support and electronic data discovery, which involves compiling, managing, and analyzing documents for corporations locked in legal battles.

Asked of the impact of the latest acquisition to Integreon’s revenues, Ayala said, “we grew over 100 percent last year. This year, we’ll grow at over 60 percent. It would be closer to 80 percent if we factored in the full year of Datum.”

With almost 2,000 employees globally, Integreon serves many of the largest global law firms, investment banks and numerous Global 2000 corporations in both the US and Europe. Apart from being a top-ranked provider globally of high-value legal process outsourcing services, the company is also a provider of high-value knowledge process outsourcing services. It has operations in the Philippines, India and North Dakota.

Integreon, Ayala added, will continue to be on the look out for acquisitions. “The whole space continues to grow rapidly. The slowdown in the US has increased the need for companies to reduce their costs so we are seeing very strong top line growth for Integreon and other companies under LiveIt,” he said.

Source: Business Mirror, June 12, 2008
by Honey Madrilejos-Reyes