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Cap Gemini buys Beechwood

Global IT consulting firm Cap Gemini is acquiring privately-held telecommunications services provider Beechwood in a $200 million deal.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
Global IT consulting firm Cap Gemini is acquiring privately-held telecommunications services provider Beechwood in a $200 million deal, the company said.

Cap Gemini said yesterday it bought Beechwood to expand its telecommunications services business in the United States.

Cap Gemini said it will combine Beechwood with its own telecommunications unit to create a joint division of 750 consultants, with expected 1999 revenues of $130 million.

The new division will be managed by Beechwood president and CEO Ron Ponder.

Clark, New Jersey-based Beechwood is an 11-year old firm with 400 employees and 4 regional offices. The company's customers include AT&T, Bell Atlantic/Nynex, and GTE. Beechwood's services include carrier to carrier interconnection, new carrier systems, post-merger IT consolidation, and IP network implementation.

Reporting an average annual growth rate of 43 percent during the past four years, Beechwood forecasts 1999 revenues of $80 million, up from $56 million in 1998.