Japanese firm to acquire South Africa’s Dimension Data

Japan-based Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT), one of the largest global telecommunications service providers, on Thursday announced it will buy South Africa’s Dimension Data for approximately £2.1 billion (US$3.2 billion).

Satoshi Miura

Satoshi Miura

Dimension Data is a specialist IT services and solutions provider that helps clients plan, build, support and manage their IT infrastructures. The company has operations in 47 countries around the world.

It has been reported that NTT sees the transaction as way to extend their reach into emerging markets, including the African continent where Dimension Data already has a large footprint.

The BBC quoted Satoshi Miura, president and chief executive officer of NTT, saying that “Dimension Data has a strong presence in emerging markets, especially in Africa, South America and the Middle East, where NTT has a smaller presence. Its brand power is stronger than NTT’s overseas. I want Dimension Data to be the core for NTT’s global strategy.”

NTT will not tamper with Dimension Data’s current management and business structure. The company’s head office is also set to remain in Johannesburg.

“From the outset, and from when these discussions got quite serious, the Japanese made it very clear that they had no plans at all to interfere with the culture of the business, to change the brand of the business, to change the name of the business. They recognise very clearly that the people is what it’s all about at Dimension Data, and entrepreneurial spirit is what it’s all about. And so they were pretty clear in their view that they firstly wanted to, as I say, keep the brand, but the people are all-important,” Dimension Data chairman, Jeremy Ord, told Moneyweb.

Commenting on the acquisition, Miura said, “We are delighted that the board of directors of Dimension Data has unanimously agreed to support our offer for Dimension Data. By leveraging the complementary strengths of both companies, we are confident that we will provide end-to-end, global-one-stop and high quality ICT services.

“Dimension Data and NTT share the common vision to create new services and values to succeed in the coming age of cloud computing. Our combined strength will allow us to accelerate execution of our strategies to achieve our shared vision. We have established a strong relationship between the management of Dimension Data and that of NTT. We are looking forward to welcoming the management and employees of Dimension Data to the enlarged NTT Group,” Miura said.