Research firm fetches $31 million. (Up Front).DecisionQuest, a Torrance-based legal research firm, has been sold to Bowne v. t. 1. To make ready; to prepare; to dress. We will all bowne ourselves for the banquet. - Sir W. Scott. Business Solutions for $31 million. The 25-year-old company that specializes in jury selection will retain its local headquarters. No staff cuts were anticipated, although DecisionQuest's Chicago offices might be consolidated with the parent company. With 17 offices nationwide, Decision-Quest co-founder Phillip Anthony said the deal was made to expand the firm's reach. "We have increasingly found a need to provide a wider range of services," he said. The firm's products include CaseMap and CaseTester software, used in plotting trial strategies; courtroom graphics; and jury consultation, including conducting focus groups. The acquisition was part of New York-based Bowne's strategy to reduce its reliance on financial printing services, which are less in demand than they were during the IPO (Initial Public Offering) The first time a company offers shares of stock to the public. While not a computer term per se, many founders, employees and insiders of computer companies have found this acronym more exciting than any tech term they ever heard. boom. Bowne Business Solutions is a division of Bowne & Co. Inc. "We've been on a diversification Diversification A risk management technique that mixes a wide variety of investments within a portfolio. It is designed to minimize the impact of any one security on overall portfolio performance. Notes: Diversification is possibly the greatest way to reduce the risk. strategy over the last five years because of the cyclical cyclical Of or relating to a variable, such as housing starts, car sales, or the price of a certain stock, that is subject to regular or irregular up-and-down movements. nature of printing," said Bowne Business Solutions President David Shea. "The purchase of DecisionQuest was to expand our service offerings." Anthony, who was a practicing attorney in the 1970s, founded the company with Mike Covo, Allan Colman and Lane Hastings in 1977. In 1991, the company changed its name to DecisionQuest. There are now 130 employees. Under terms of the deal, the four founders will receive additional compensation if certain performance goals are met. Anthony declined to disclose revenues. He said the deal will allow the firm to offer new services like document preparation for lawyers, facilities management The management of a user's computer installation by an outside organization. All operations including systems, programming and the datacenter can be performed by the facilities management organization on the user's premises. and computer setup See BIOS setup and install program. for trials. The purchase is the latest in Bowne's ongoing diversification effort. It purchased Berlitz GlobalNet Inc. Sept. 27 for $75 million. GlobalNet, of Princeton, provides translation and software testing Software testing is the process used to measure the quality of developed computer software. Usually, quality is constrained to such topics as correctness, completeness, security, but can also include more technical requirements as described under the ISO standard ISO 9126, such services. Bowne & Co. had $1.05 billion in revenues in 2001. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion