Sage looking to mind Mind Your Own Business' business
Looking for a bit of down-under gobblement
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
Geordie accountancy specialist Sage is in the race to buy Australian firm MYOB (from Mind Your Own Business) which offers similar services down under.
The deal could close for as much as A$1bn (£637m) according to sources quoted by Reuters.
MYOB has been in business for over 20 years and claims a million Aussie and Kiwi customers.
It started life with one accountancy product but now offers various business, payroll, sales and marketing products.
But the British accountancy specialist could face rival bids from private equity firms Bain Capital and Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts and Co.
Sage has made several smaller buys in recent years.
The official statement from Sage said: "The Sage Group plc ("Sage") notes the press speculation regarding a potential acquisition of MYOB Pty Ltd ("MYOB"). Sage can confirm that it is currently considering a potential acquisition of MYOB. However there is no certainty that it will proceed. The company will provide further information, if and when appropriate."
Two private equity companies paid A$450m (£287m) in 2008 for MYOB, a nice little return. ®
COMMENTS
MYOB****cks
I used to use this and was paying an annual 'maintenance' fee but was told that they had been bought out and I had to buy an upgrade to cover all sorts of crap I didn't want. Told them this in no uncertain terms and the response was 'well tough, you won't get any more PAYE/NI/VAT updates even though you have 9 months left on your annual agreement'.
Fortunately GNUCash works really well, is free, and HMRC now have their act together in providing simple information to do payroll stuff.
Sorted.
same services?
"...which offers similar services"
What, a crappy cobbled-together mishmash of components that doesn't work properly and requires UAC to be switched off under Win7 64bit to even work?
Sage now own the ACT CRM product
I had personal experience of it straight out of the box.
What a dog. For some reason they moved the development team to a different state and seemed to have lost some key people. Result 10-20 secs moving between records in a 2000 rec database.
As always benchmark software (fully patched) *before* you buy.
Expect your MYOB performance to go down the gurgler ASAP.

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