Warburg Pincus LLC sold two million shares of Ness Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: NSTC), 8.5% of the IT services company, to a private equity fund of Citigroup (NYSE: C) for $31 million last week. Two Ness directors also sold shares: Morris Wolfson sold 250,000 shares for $2.5 million and Henry Kressel sold 3.2 million shares for $32 million. The transactions were made at $9.90 per share. Company officer Michael Zinderman exercised options on 17,400 shares.
Warburg Pincus invested in Ness since the late 1990s, when then-CEO Raviv Zoller and the shareholders at the time, the Wolfson family, sought an investor to finance a series of acquisitions. Ness subsequently acquired a number of companies in which Warburg Pincus had a holding, such as Indo-American company Apar InfoTech. When Ness went public, Warburg Pincus owned 35% of the company.
Citigroup has been following Ness for a long time prior to the deal with Warburg Pincus. Ness's share has fallen 40% in the past year.
Ness closed at $9.37 after rising 2.2% Thursday, giving a market cap of $367 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 23, 2008
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