EMC Announces Offer to Acquire Conchango

Acquisition Will Strengthen and Expand EMC’s Global IT Consulting Services
To further expand and enhance its global services expertise and delivery, EMC Corporation, the world leader in information infrastructure solutions, today announced an offer to acquire the entire issued and to be issued share capital of UK-based Conchango plc., a growing technology consulting firm specializing in the design, development and delivery of custom applications and digital experiences. The acquisition of Conchango will enhance EMC’s ability to provide well-established, proven technology consulting services to customers in the United Kingdom and across Europe, and builds upon the focused investments EMC has been making to expand its information infrastructure consulting services around the world.

EMC has offered 23.1 pence per Conchango share, which values Conchango at approximately £42.0 million, or $84.0 million. The Conchango board has unanimously recommended the offer to Conchango shareholders. The transaction, which already has the support of Conchango shareholders holding approximately 80% of its issued share capital, is expected to close in April. The acquisition is not expected to have a material impact on EMC revenue or on EPS for 2008.

With headquarters in London, Conchango is one of the largest European IT consultancies with a high degree of focus and experience in Microsoft application consulting services, serving many of the largest companies throughout the United Kingdom. As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and with more than 300 professionals, Conchango’s business and technology consulting expertise will broaden EMC’s overall service and solution portfolio, enhancing the end-to-end business value of EMC’s information infrastructure offering for customers.

Howard Elias, President, EMC Global Services and Resource Management Software Group, said, “The addition of Conchango will mark another key milestone in the evolution of EMC’s rapidly growing consulting services organization, significantly expanding our global capabilities to design, build and deliver tightly integrated solutions for our customers’ most critical business applications. Conchango and its talented employees have a proven track record of delivering many of the United Kingdom’s largest data integration projects using highly scalable tools and methodologies. By combining Conchango with our own well-established Microsoft consultancy practice begun in the U.S., we will be well-positioned to further expand our joint capabilities to more customers and establish a strong foundation for a growing consultancy practice in the UK and throughout Europe.”

Mike Altendorf, Conchango’s co-founder and joint managing director, said, “Conchango has had a tremendous few years, where we have seen the return on our strategy of helping enterprise clients in our target sectors make the most of the rapidly evolving technology landscape. By helping our clients to be successful we’ve grown our business to be one of the leaders in the UK and the next stage in our strategy is to expand upon this success in new markets. We are thrilled to become part of EMC which gives us the platform for expansion throughout Europe and also access to the expertise and wider resources of the global EMC team. We look forward to this next exciting stage in our development and the benefits we believe it will bring to our clients, our employees and our business partners.”

Upon close, Conchango will become the foundation of EMC’s expanding European Microsoft consulting practice within EMC’s Consulting & Solutions Integration Services (CSIS) organization. Mike Altendorf and Richard Thwaite, Conchango’s co-founders and joint managing directors will co-lead this European consulting practice. With more than 12,000 technology experts globally, EMC’s Global Services Division brings a unique mix of information infrastructure experience and strategic business focus to give customers a full range of consulting, design, implementation and support services.
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This release contains “forward-looking statements” as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in information technology spending; (iii) risks associated with acquisitions and investments, including the challenges and costs of integration, restructuring and achieving anticipated synergies; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures and new product introductions; (v) the relative and varying rates of product price and component cost declines and the volume and mixture of product and services revenues; (vi) component and product quality and availability; (vii) the transition to new products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product offerings and rapid technological and market change; (viii) insufficient, excess or obsolete inventory; (ix) war or acts of terrorism; (x) the ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates; and (xii) other one-time events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. EMC disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.