By Jo Best, 20 July 2004 13:35
NEWS EDS, which had its debt rating cut to 'junk' status last week, has landed a $1.1bn contract with the Bank of America.
The contract is an extension of a deal inked last year that saw the troubled tech services company upgrading and managing the bank's voice and data network for 10 years at cost of $4.5bn.
The contract add-on, which runs until 2013, will now mean that EDS will integrate the Bank of America's latest acquisition, FleetBoston, into the network. Once the hook-up is complete, the network will support 180,000 staff across 5,700 locations.
The news came as a boon to the stock market, which saw prices rise around four per cent following the announcement of the deal. Shares in the company had dropped significantly over the course of the year, following a series of struggles with contracts, including a recent parting of ways with the NHS on a deal to provide and manage its email service.
Ovum Holway analyst Philip Carnelley believes that although the deal doesn't necessarily spell the end of EDS' dark times yet - it's just an extension with a transfer of 150 employees from FleetBoston to EDS - but the services company is still a force to be reckoned with.
"EDS is still an IT services juggernaut here in Europe as well as in the USÂ… It may be down but it's certainly not out," he said in a statement.
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