Concur buys GlobalExpense

Specialist expenses management software company Concur continued its 2011 consolidation march with a £12m+ deal to acquire its UK rival, GlobalExpense.

The acquisition will be subject to the usual conditions demanded of a NASDAQ-listed company and is expected to be completed by the end of Concur’s current financial year on 30 September. Concur estimated that GlobalExpense would add $500,000 to its revenues for this financial year, and $5m next year.

According to Concur CEO Steve Singh, the deal will extend Concur’s leadership in the UK market by “leveraging” GlobalExpense’s knowledge of UK tax law and receipt validation expertise.

“This acquisition reflects our commitment to continue growing Concur’s investment and presence to serve the large untapped travel and expense management market in Europe,” Singh said.

At the beginning of 2011, Concur acquired the TripIt travel planning web community and laid out plans to integrate the two systems into a single, mobile-enabled travel and expense management solution by the end of 2011.

As acquisitive software giants Sage, Microsoft and Oracle have found, the work needed to string together an ever-growing software portfolio can be daunting. In the immediate aftermath of its latest announcement, Concur did not specify whether it also planned to include GlobalExpense within its unified application.