Cognos Enters Agreement to Acquire
LEX2000; Extends Leadership in Business Intelligence to Financial Data Marts
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Cognos, a leading strategic vendor of enterprise business intelligence solutions, has announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LEX2000 Inc., a developer of financial data mart and reporting software, for approximately US$10 million in a combination of cash and stock.

LEX2000's tools will complement the Cognos enterprise reporting expertise. With the addition of LEX2000's financial reporting software, Cognos will provide customers with both operational and financial data marts on an enterprise scale. LEX2000 gives companies enterprise wide access to financial data, creating data marts and retrieving information in order to quickly and easily build complex financial reports. LEX2000's tools are particularly strong in the areas of complex calculations such as currency conversions, multilevel eliminations, and allocations across multiple organization hierarchies.

"The acquisition of LEX2000 provides Cognos with a set of strategic solutions that enhances our enterprise business intelligence market position and simultaneously gives our customers access to robust, proven financial reporting expertise," said Ron Zambonini, Cognos president and CEO. "The addition of LEX2000 to the Cognos line of business solutions will also be helpful to our channel partners who are often expected to quickly implement financial applications for ROI, competitive advantage and strategic value. Of particular importance to us is that the LEX2000 team is world class, with a wide variety of practical and managerial expertise in the finance departments of various Global 2000 companies."

"I believe that Cognos' award-winning business intelligence software provides enterprise customers with the strongest product offering in the business intelligence market," said Robert F. Reisner, President and CEO of LEX2000 Inc. "Add LEX2000's solution, and Cognos customers have a best-of-breed enterprise platform for accurate, actionable financial information deployable to all managers. Meanwhile, the world-class Cognos sales and marketing infrastructure will help place our combined solution in the right hands."

Founded in 1995, LEX2000 Inc. was formed through the purchase of key software assets from the General Electric Company. These assets included the core financial reporting and consolidation application program, and the specialized financial programming tools that were used to develop the LEX2000 system. LEX2000 is headquartered in Marietta, Georgia and designs, develops and markets financial tools and applications. It is best known for its budgeting, consolidation and management reporting software. Customers include large global corporations like General Electric, Lockheed Martin and MCI.

Cognos will account for this acquisition as a purchase. This transaction is subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions. Upon closing, this acquisition is expected to result in a charge against after-tax income of approximately $1.5 million, or 3 cents per share, as a write-off of in-process research and development under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.

Cognos

Cognos is the leading vendor of enterprise business intelligence solutions. Business Intelligence software makes corporate data easily accessible to everyone in an organization, so they can better coordinate decision-making across the entire enterprise, and improve the performance of the business. Cognos products are available directly from Cognos and through an extensive network of channel partners. The Company also develops, markets and supports software tools for application development.

Founded in 1969, Cognos is a publicly traded company with offices around the world and headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. For more information, visit the Cognos Web site at http://www.cognos.com.