Orange Business Services has announced it has entered negotiations to acquire a controlling stake in data and digital services specialists Business & Decision.

The acquisition will broaden OBS’ capabilities in the business intelligence and data science spaces, particularly around data governance and data analysis. Taking a 67% stake in the company at €7.93 per share would value the business at €62.5 million, though this would represent a 34% premium on current share price.

“Business & Decision and Orange Business Services share a genuine digital culture based on common skill sets, while offering complementary catalogues of services to their customers,” said Thierry Bonhomme, boss at Orange Business Services.

“We are convinced that the combination of Business & Decision’s expertise in data and Business Intelligence and our dual know-how as an operator and service integrator will be a key lever that will enable us to accelerate the digital transformation of our enterprise customers and stimulate growth.”

This acquisition project is part of OBS’ development strategy, which aims to position it as a global player in digital transformation and as well as across the entire data services value-chain. Basically, if there is a buzzword out there, OBS want to shoehorn it in somewhere.

If you would like to learn more about the acquisition, we’d suggest having a look at our sister site Light Reading, where Iain Morris has done some proper legwork.