Nordic Business Report-January 17, 2007-Group NBT Plc acquires Danish domain name service Ascio Technologies A/S in GBP18.3m deal (C)1994-2007 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD http://www.m2.com United Kingdom based pan-European domain name management and web hosting services provider Group NBT Plc said on Wednesday (17 January) that it has acquired privately-owned Danish domain name services provider Ascio Technologies A/S. The purchase price is GBP18.3m and will be paid in cash, shares and options. Ascio Technologies is headquartered in Copenhagen, but also has offices in Germany, Switzerland and Norway. Its operations include SpeedNames Business and SpeedNames Online, and the company reported revenues of GBP10.3m in 2005. "[The acquisition] gives us access to a significant part of the European market much faster than we could have achieved by organic growth alone and also provides good opportunities to increase our sales. At the same time we will be able to realise the benefits of scale we have planned for in building our systems and processes," said Geoff Wicks, CEO of Group NBT. The acquisition creates some duplication of operations, and Group NBT plans to carry out rationalisation measures during 2007. Group NBT is headquartered in London in the UK. The company has 120 employees world-wide, with offices in London, New York, Nice, Frankfurt and Madrid. ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected]))