Fujitsu Shareholders Clear the Way for Merger

Fujitsu Shareholders Clear the Way for Infinity Merger

Wellington, New Zealand - 30 October 2007 - Fujitsu shareholders have formally ratified the decision to merge Fujitsu New Zealand Limited with Infinity Solutions, giving their support to a move which more than doubles the company's size and positions it to compete with other Tier One service providers.

Chief Executive of Fujitsu Australia & New Zealand, Rod Vawdrey, said the merger is a perfect example of a company becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

"This has been a natural coming together of two extremely professional service organisations with highly complementary skills and experience," he said. "Now that the business end of the merger has been completed, Fujitsu New Zealand will focus on leveraging its augmented skills base and consulting capabilities to address a broader range of opportunities.

"Not only is Fujitsu New Zealand now better positioned in terms of our breadth of expertise and critical mass to target larger contracts and compete with the leading players in this market, but we have also acquired unique skills and resources to allow us to meet the needs of SMEs," said Mr Vawdrey.

Two Key Appointments Provide Local Leadership
"To maximise the advantage we gain from the merger and ensure that we continue to deliver for our customers, we have made two key appointments, promoting Infinity's former CFO, Stuart Stitt, to the role of Managing Director, Fujitsu New Zealand, and appointing Joanne Healey to General Manager, Sales and Service Delivery. Both roles are critical to our continued performance in this highly competitive market and enable us to leverage the knowledge and experience of these key executives," he said.

Stuart Stitt, who as Managing Director has overall responsibility for the new entity's sales and operational performance, said existing clients have been extremely supportive of the merger.

"Overwhelmingly, clients are telling us that they recognise the enormous benefit to them of this strategic move in terms of our increased range of software knowledge and skills to complement Fujitsu's traditional strengths in infrastructure and hardware," he said.

Both Fujitsu and Infinity have experienced significant growth in recent times, and as General Manager, Sales and Service Delivery, Joanne Healey will continue to build strong customer and partner relationships, leading sales, service and alliance marketing to open up new growth opportunities.

"We will leverage our complete end-to-end IT services offering, backed by deep alliance partner relationships, to deliver improved services to customers and extend our market reach and penetration," she said.

Analysts Welcome Merger
Leading research firm, IDC, said the merger improves Fujitsu's coverage of the New Zealand market, creates expanded opportunities for partner relationships, provides complementary strengths and capabilities, and expands Fujitsu's mid-market expertise.

According to IDC IT Services Analyst, Jenna Griffin, "The ability to address the mid-market will be one of the key differentiators that Fujitsu has over the competition, both in terms of scale and mindshare when addressing Tier two competition, and capabilities and experience when coming up against Tier One competition.

"IDC believes that this will be one of the key growth areas in the New Zealand services market in coming years, where the market will see a showdown between small and large players converging on the market. Fujitsu, as a merged entity possesses the potential to dominate in this space through a combination of experience, customer base and high end capabilities."

ENDS

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