Epicor Software has agreed to a buyout offer from private-equity firm Apax Partners. The deal is valued at roughly $976 million based on a $12.50 per share price. Epicor will be combined with another ERP company, Activant, that Apax is also buying with Epicor remaining as the surviving name. The combined company will have about $825 million in annual revenue And Apax says the combined purchase price is about $2 billion. Activant, a public reporting company but not publicly traded, is controlled by investment funds affiliated with Hellman & Friedman, Thoma Bravo and JMI Equity.

A little earlier than perhaps expected, the era of Pascal Houillon as CEO of Sage North America began this week. He took over from Sue Swenson, who had held the job since from March 2008, and had it for one of the toughest periods imaginable since she got to be the hatchet-person for shedding people and costs. Yesterday was her last day. The press has not officially talked to Houillon – a scheduled call was postponed until May 6 because of the timing of the end of the first half yesterday, March 31, and the announcement of those results on May 4. Read more...

Non-operating income helped Lawson Software to sharp increase in net income on a 5.4-percent rise in revenue for the third quarter ended February 28. And unusual might be the general tone of the results since the company canceled its earnings webcast because of the unsolicited takeover bid it has received from Infor. Net income of $21.4 million for the most recently ended quarter compared to $1.7 million a year earlier, anything but routine. Read more...

Atlanta isn’t the hottest ticket for shows (but they used to do well with Comdex) and the product announcements looming this year are the latest versions of Dynamics AX and SL.  Last year was the big show for Dynamics GP with the 2010 version of that application rolling out. So is Convergence going to be a tough sell for GP users, a group that I’d have to think is the biggest in the United States among the four financial packages?