Sopra Steria, a tech company present in 30 countries, including Luxembourg, wants to accelerate the growth of its consulting business. It has announced plans to acquire Aurexia, a consultancy firm specialising in financial services in France and abroad. Sopra Steria's aim is to "double the size of its consulting business by 2028 and generate more than 12% of its revenue in this sector by that date", according to a press release.

Sopra Steria has been present in Luxembourg for 15 years and employs 360 people in the country. Here, the company focuses on consulting, cybersecurity, development and infrastructure services, particularly in the cloud. It serves mainly European and Luxembourg institutions, but also finance and industrial organisations.

"Our intention to acquire Aurexia is in line with the group's strategy of accelerated growth in its consulting business in order to offer financial institutions the skills and capabilities they need to support the major transformations in their various businesses,” stated Fabrice Asvazadourian, CEO of Sopra Steria Next. Sopra Steria Next is Sopra Steria's digital transformation and strategy consulting brand. “This acquisition will position Sopra Steria Next among the leaders in management consulting in the financial services sector in France, with more than 400 consultants dedicated to this industry, and will enable us to further combine our business expertise with our mastery of new technologies."

Aurexia, founded in 2006, specialises in consulting and the transformation of financial services in several sectors: retail banking and specialised financial services, insurance, investment banking, asset & wealth management, cross-functional finance, risk, compliance and data management. It has developed an innovation laboratory called Aurexia Finlab and works with fintechs to produce data management prototypes and studies. It has offices in Paris, Nantes, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and Luxembourg, where the company will be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.

Aurexia expects to have achieved sales of almost €20m in 2024, 80% of which will be in France. Its business grew by 11% last year. According to Aurexia chairman Eric Vernhes, the acquisition by Sopra Steria should enable this growth to continue.

Deal to be finalised in second quarter

"This proposed merger would enable us to further extend our customer coverage and increase our development leverage,” Aurexia's CEO, Dominique Herrou. “Critical mass will provide us with enhanced prospects for major transformation programmes in banking and insurance. We could also add further value for our customers thanks to the synergies to be developed with Sopra Steria's Vertical Financial Services.”

In Luxembourg, Aurexia partner Alain de Cidrac saw the deal as a "great opportunity to develop our consulting activities for financial institutions. We will be able to benefit from synergies with Sopra Steria Next's Belgian and German entities, both of which have strong links with Luxembourg."

Sopra Steria's press release stated that the proposed acquisition is subject to consultation with employee representative bodies before being finalised in the second quarter of 2025.

Read the original French-language version of this news report /