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| Zurmont Madison Acquires Majority Interest in CLS Communication Zurmont Madison has acquired a majority interest in the language services provider CLS Communication. The deal consists of a partial buyout of the existing managing shareholders combined with an increase in the company's equity. The funds will be used to make further acquisitions and finance ongoing global expansion. On completion of the transaction, the existing management team headed by CEO Doris Albisser will hold a substantial minority interest. CLS Communication was formed in 1997 as a spin-off from the language services departments of Swiss Bank Corporation (now UBS) and Zurich Insurance and was incorporated with registered office in Basel. Today CLS is a provider of integrated multilingual communication services in its core areas of finance, insurance, life sciences, telecommunications and legal. The company is one of the 15 largest global language services providers and is the market leader in Switzerland. A number of major companies have outsourced their language services to CLS. As a provider of integrated multilingual communication and language technology solutions, CLS offers a broad range of services. These include copywriting and editing, human and machine translation, terminology databases as well as integrated client applications. In 2008 the company posted sales of around CHF 60 million with an internal headcount of 350 linguists and related specialists. In addition to its own employees CLS has a global network of over 1600 external language specialists throughout the world. As a technology innovator CLS employs state-of-the-art language technology and complies with the most stringent banking confidentiality requirements. Zurmont Madison's investment will secure the equity funding required to execute the company's international growth strategy. The language services market is extremely fragmented and therefore offers good expansion opportunities to a leading provider with a strong capital base. As a result of the transaction, new directors from Zurmont Madison Management AG, Zurich, will join the CLS board of directors, which currently consists of Alfred Niederer, Markus Hildbrand and Doris Albisser. The new members are Guido Patroncini, Andreas Ziegler and Michel Hirschi. The company's operational management will remain in the hands of the present executive team. write your comments about the article :: © 2009 Computing News :: home page |