Ayala unit acquires NY firm

Ayala-led legal process outsourcing firm Integreon Managed Solutions Inc. expects its revenues to almost double this year with the acquisition of Datum Legal, a New York-based litigation support and electronic data discovery (EDD) company.

Integreon provides a range of knowledge support services to professionals, such as research and analysts, legal and financial document services, legal and discovery services, and finance and accounting services.  It acquired Datum from a group of private investors  for $10 million in cash, part of which will also be used to fund the company’s working capital requirements.

Integreon chairman Fred Ayala said they are optimistic the company will continue to grow this year with the consolidation of Datum into its books.  While he declined to say how much Datum earned last year, he said the figure was quite “significant”. 

Integreon, which has offices in New York, Mumbai, Delhi, London and North Dakota, posted a 140-percent overall growth in revenues last year.

“If we were to book Datum for the full year, we would grow close to 100 percent,” Ayala said.

Integreon has over 400 offshore professionals reviewing litigation documents for law firms and Global 2000 corporations. With the addition of Datum’s capabilities, Integreon will now offer an integrated discovery management solution with a guaranteed fixed price per document, thereby allowing firms to drastically and predictably reduce litigation costs and improve quality and speed of review.

The acquisition is also expected to help corporations and law firms deal with a single point of contact for all the key elements of an e-discovery case – professional services, data reduction through analytics, processing, hosting and attorney review.

“We want to expand where we are today. We see explosive growth on the legal side. We want to continue growing rapidly as we see the increasing need of companies to reduce costs,” Ayala said.

Integreon Philippine country head  Erik Tabuena said with the acquisition of Datum, law firms and corporate legal documents can deal with a single provider to handle all their litigation support needs at a much lower costs.

In January, Integreon launched its facility in the Philippines, which marks a breakthrough for the country into the high value and rapidly growing knowledge process outsourcing service.

Globally competitive business organizations are investing heavily to enable their workforce to be more productive. In the US alone, there are an estimated 48 million knowledge workers out of its total 137 million workers.

Ayala said Integreon has a strong track record in delivering the highest levels of quality outsourcing services for the world’s top legal and financial firms. Integreon’s customers include six of the 10  largest global investment banks, two of the three largest global law firms, many Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 corporations, several top private equity firms and hedge funds.

The offshore legal services sector is expected to grow to nearly $500 million while e-Discovery, which involves the process of securing electronic data for litigation purposes, is expected to grow to $3.4 billion within five years.  Offshoring research and analytics in banking and financial services, on the other hand, are projected to grow to $620 million within five years.