India's Reliance acquires Yipes for $300m

Reliance Communications, one of India’s largest telecommunications companies, has announced plans to purchase U.S. Ethernet service provider Yipes for $300 million. The deal was completed Sunday.

Yipes has 850 corporate customers, including leading financial-services firms, such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and New York Stock Exchange. Based in San Francisco, Yipes has fiber-optic coverage in 14 major U.S. cities, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Founded in 1999, Yipes is a venture-capital-financed start-up that has pioneered the market for fully managed Metro Ethernet services. Yipes raised $100 million in venture financing. In May, Yipes officials said the company’s business grew 40% in 2006.

The Yipes acquisition is the largest ever for Reliance Communications.

"The acquisition of Yipes drives forward our strategy to offer the most sophisticated, cutting-edge data-communications products and services, specializing in application and content distribution, spanning developed and emerging markets," said Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Communications, in a statement. "We see enormous potential to rapidly expand Yipes coverage in the U.S. and to globalize Yipes service be leveraging our customer relationships and network reach around the globe."

Yipes officials said the sale to Reliance Communications will help the company continue to penetrate the global financial-services industry.

"The financial sector, in particular, presents a key opportunity for us as we are well positioned to capture the market by meeting the fast-growing and stringent connectivity requirements of financial exchanges around the world," said John Scanlon, CEO of Yipes, in a statement. "The financial connectivity markets alone is expected to reach $6.3 billion by 2010 and grow at around 35% per annum."

Yipes will be a wholly owned subsidiary of the Flag Global Network, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Communications. Yipes plans to roll out its Metro Ethernet services in the 40 countries where Flag terminates its network.