Italian Atlantia Group – a leading infrastructure operator -- signed an agreement with Siemens Group to take over YUNEX Traffic for close to 1 billion EUR; with this acquisition Atlantia will strengthen its position in the promising urban mobility space; it is interesting to see for the second time in a row (after the acquisition of Transcore by Singapore Technologies) that strategic investors are willing to valuate targets at a much higher rate than private equity funds who naturally have a shorter time horizon, less potential for realizing synergies with existing activities and who may see business-2-government less attractive and possibly riskier than players who are already active in this space.
It will be interesting to see if and how Atlantia will consolidate all its ITS companies and investments into one global ITS super-player over time.