Gemalto NV acquires Leigh Mardon's personalisation centre in Taiwan
Gemalto NV has entered into an agreement with Leigh Mardon to acquire Leigh Mardon Taiwan, a 100 per cent owned subsidiary of Leigh Mardon Group Pty Ltd. The closing is scheduled to take place on November 30, 2006, upon satisfaction of certain conditions precedent as stated in the agreement. Leigh Mardon is an established supplier of secure transaction products and services with its headquarters in Melbourne and is a market leader in financial cards in Taiwan and Australia.
Leigh Mardon is security accredited by Visa, MasterCard, Europay, Bankcard, Diners Club and American Express and holds International Quality Standards Organisation (ISO) 9002 series certification.
"Taiwan has always been a locomotive for innovative banking cards and services, recognised by major financial institutions as an early-adopter of innovative solution schemes," says Tan Teck Lee, president North Asia of Gemalto.
"This acquisition will reinforce Gemalto’s positioning in Asian banking markets, enabling the company to further develop a local partnering approach with its local customers.
"We at Gemalto are keen on investigating new resources to enhance our customers’ business and marketing differentiation; the Leigh Mardon Taiwan acquisition is a major step towards this goal for our Asian banking customers, especially in the current context of EMV migration and contactless trend."
At the end of 2008, most of the Taiwanese current installed base of financial cards should be converted to EMV (Europay Mastercard Visa) compliant chip-based cards. Additionally, as a key marketplace for successful innovative implementations, Taiwan has been showing strong interest in high-end combined contactless and chip credit cards, serving all major Taiwanese financial institutions.
Gemalto is a leader in digital security with pro forma 2005 annual revenues of €1.7bn (US$2.2bn), operations in 120 countries and 11,000 employees including 1500 R&D engineers. The company’s solutions make personal digital interactions secure and easy in a world where everything of value - from money to entertainment to identities - is increasingly represented as bits and bytes communicated over networks.
More than a billion people worldwide use the company’s products and services for telecommunications, banking, e-government, identity management, multimedia content, digital rights management, IT security and other applications. Gemalto was formed in June 2006 by the combination of Axalto Holding NV and Gemplus International SA.
Leigh Mardon Australasia Pty Ltd has a history in security printing dating back over 160 years, and is one of Australasia’s leading secure transaction services company, with revenues of over $100m per annum. The company has market-leading operations in card production and personalisation, cheques, identity systems, security printing, and mail services, and has cemented this position with the recent announcement of a series of acquisitions of companies with congruent operations in cards, smart cards and cheque production.
Leigh Mardon is a part of the international American Banknote group. American Banknote (ABN) employs over 3000 people through its subsidiaries on four continents. The company specialises in high security printing services, identification systems, card production and document logistics, and there is substantial congruity between the products and service provided by ABN, with those of Leigh Mardon.
