Capgemini

Capgemini, a French-headquartered IT services and consulting company with €14.1 billion in revenue (FY2019), completed the acquisition of Altran Technologies in April 2020. The acquisition price was €3.6 billion excluding approximately €1.4 billion in net financial debt. Altran was a leading engineering and R&D services company with approximately €3.2 billion in revenue and 50,000 engineers serving automotive, aerospace, and industrial clients. The strategic rationale was to create the world's largest engineering services practice — Capgemini Engineering — by combining Altran's embedded R&D capabilities with Capgemini's digital transformation expertise. However, the combined organization initially faced significant integration challenges: two separate delivery organizations, duplicated offshore centers in India, incompatible tooling and methodologies, and overlapping management layers. Altran's pre-acquisition operating margins of approximately 10-11% lagged Capgemini's group average of 12.3% (FY2019), creating a clear margin convergence opportunity.

Between 2020 and 2022, Capgemini executed a systematic integration program targeting both cost and revenue synergies:

• Delivery organization merger: Consolidated Altran's 50,000 engineers with Capgemini's existing engineering teams under the Capgemini Engineering brand, launched in April 2021. Eliminated duplicated management layers, project management offices, and quality assurance functions.
• Purchasing and facilities consolidation: Rationalized overlapping software licenses, hardware procurement, real estate, and shared back-office services between the legacy organizations. The original target was €70-100 million in annual run-rate cost synergies within three years.
• Offshore center rationalization: Consolidated overlapping delivery centers in India where both organizations maintained separate facilities performing similar engineering work (embedded software, test automation, CAD/CAE).
• Cross-selling program: Systematically cross-sold Capgemini's digital transformation services to Altran's engineering clients, and engineering services to Capgemini's IT clients. The original target was €200-350 million in additional annual revenue synergies.
• Headcount optimization: Managed the combined workforce from a peak of approximately 360,000 employees (FY2022) down to 340,400 (FY2023) through natural attrition and selective rationalization, while maintaining revenue growth — improving revenue per employee.