LTM buys Randstad’s Europe, Australia units in first acquisition since merger
LTM Ltd is buying Randstad’s European and Australian subsidiaries for $186 million, with chief executive Venu Lambu buying the businesses of a former employer in the first acquisition since the merger of parent Larsen & Toubro’s two information technology (IT) services companies.
The Bengaluru-based company, India’s sixth-largest, said on Friday that LTM will acquire Randstad’s technology and consulting business in France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Australia, which will generate annual revenues of €469 million (or about $500 million).
LTM was founded in November 2022. Larsen & Toubro made a hostile bid to acquire Bengaluru-based Mindtree and later merged it with L&T Infotech.
This acquisition represents nearly double LTM’s incremental revenue of $271 million last year. LTM’s revenue will be around $5.2 billion, at $500 million, compared to $6.39 billion reported by Tech Mahindra last fiscal.
Randstad, which follows a January-December financial calendar compared to LTM’s April-March calendar, has reported revenue declines for the past two years; A decline of 13% and 11% in 2025 and 2024, respectively. On the other hand, LTM’s revenue increased by 6% to $4.76 billion, the fastest pace in FY26.
Lambu previously chaired Randstad for two years until January 2025, after which he took over as LTM’s CEO-designate.
The acquisition of Randstad is expected to expand LTM’s footprint across aerospace and defence, automotive, utilities and BFS, which together account for more than three-fifths of the company’s business.
“By combining our global AI-centric capabilities with local context and industry depth, this acquisition will strengthen our ability to deliver aligned, domain-focused AI services and sovereign solutions in markets that are strategically important to us,” Lambu said in a filing to the stock exchanges.
“By partnering with LTM, we will ensure our customers continue to receive world-class services while aligning our portfolio to invest in growth segments and digital markets that offer the most scale and value,” Randstad CEO Sander van ‘t Noordende said in the filing.
AI-first services
According to Phil Fersht, CEO of HFS Research, Randstad may have decided that this business no longer fit its core staff-centric operating model; LTM sees an opportunity to more aggressively industrialize and platform these capabilities within the AI-first service model.
“The question investors should be asking is ‘why only $186 million?’ not. but whether Randstad wants to leave and whether LTM believes it can achieve materially greater value from these assets than Randstad can,” he said.
As part of the acquisition, LTM will manage Randstad’s global talent center operations for five years, with some of its employees expected to move to LTM.
“LTM provides access to new sectors (aerospace and defense) and we expect LTM’s visibility in Europe to increase from ~15% currently to over 20%,” said Sushovon Nayak, principal IT analyst at Anand Rathi Institutional Equities.
The company expects the acquisition to be completed between July and September 2026.
The acquisition comes as the company advances its goal of doubling its revenue to nearly $10 billion by FY31, driven by major deals and AI-driven, high-value services, even as the rise of automation tools and an uncertain geopolitical environment continue to pose challenges. IT services.
With its new five-year plan, parent company L&T is setting an ambitious target for Lambu, who took over the top job in May last year. The company won its biggest deal four months after Lambu took over as CEO. In October, the company received an IT transformation deal worth $585 million over six years from US entertainment company Paramount Global.
Acquisitions appear to be the way forward, as the nation’s largest technology services companies remain committed to their acquisition capabilities and market access.
On March 26, Infosys Ltd said it plans to acquire US technology services companies Optimum Healthcare IT and Stratus for a total of $560 million, taking acquisition spend to $808 million in the fiscal, an all-time high.
Wipro Ltd spent $446 million on Olam and AlphaNet acquisitions; That’s more than it spent in the previous fiscal year, when it acquired Harman Digital Transformation Services (DTS) for $375 million in August.
