City & Corporate: FD wins Micro Focus equity listing bid

FD is believed to have beaten off Brunswick and Tulchan Communications for the account.

Market sources have speculated that a project of this size could be worth £100,000 to £150,000 in fees.

FD tech and telecoms practice MD Giles Sanderson will lead PR around the listing, which is expected to take place by the end of June.

UBS Investment Bank and Goldman Sachs International are joint global co-ordinators on the offering.

It has been reported that the listing could value Micro Focus at between £300m and £400m.

Micro Focus's Leverage & Extend allows customers to give new internal and external user groups access to applications on older software platforms.

Companies use its Lift & Shift product to migrate applications.

The application development and deployment software market in which Micro Focus operates is expected to grow at a compound rate of six per cent from 2003 to 2008, reaching revenues of £23.7bn.

Micro Focus's turnover increased by over 20 per cent for the nine months to 31 January, from £48m to £58m.

Micro Focus was founded in 1976 as Micro Focus Group. It was acquired by US firm Intersolv in 1998 and subsequently renamed Merant.

Merant span off Micro Focus in 2001 to form a new company owned by Golden Gate Capital which still owns around 80 per cent of the firm.

This article was first published on PR Week UK