Disposals - iSoft and Misys

Back in January, when the Isoft difficulties were at their height, I reckoned that General Atlantic might come in with a bid. In the end IBA seemed to be the winner until last week German CompuGroup came in with a 66p all cash offer. This trumped the IBA offer of 52.7p which was in shares. The deal involves CSC taking over full responsibility for the NHS IT contract - indeed CSC is buying the IPR to the software used.

This seems an extremely sensible deal and, indeed, was much better that iSoft's shareholders could possibly have expected.

I was also pleased to see yesterday that Misys has sold two bits of its US Healthcare operations for a total of c$415m. Again this seems an excellent deal and Mike Lawrie is certainly showing his worth. I have long considered Misys' acquisition of Medic in 1997 for $921m to have been the worst (or is that best?) example of my long standing warning of "Acquisition Indigestion". Much of Misys' woes can be tracked back to 1997 and Medic contributed to many of them. So (as a Misys shareholder) I am delighted to see Lawrie undoing some of the bad decisions perpetrated by Lomax on long suffering Misys shareholders over the last ten years.