Musical chairs in Germany - VW sells Gedas to T-Systems

Volkswagen has sold its IT services arm, Gedas, to T-Systems for €400m to €450m.

As expectations mount about more buying and selling of IT assets in Germany, Siemens has also this week sold its Product Related Services division, which does computer maintenance, to Fujitsu Siemens Computers (FSC) for an undisclosed sum. FSC is a joint venture between the Japanese and German giants that is mainly known for its PCs and servers.

While Siemens is going through a period of rejigging its many subsidiaries - tech has hurt the conglomerate's bottom line of late and, also this year, it sold its mobile handsets unit to Taiwan's BenQ - the VW deal is part of a trend of large German companies exiting the IT services business.

When industrial groups, the main railway operator and other automakers turned their IT departments into standalone businesses, they had a plan to handle other companies' IT and make money from doing so - only it never happened to the extent once hoped.

The VW deal, which is still subject to antitrust rubber-stamping, also sees Deutsche Telekom-owned T-Systems handling VW's IT for the next seven years, under an agreement worth €2.5bn.

T-Systems' launch in 2001 was marked by the acquisition of a majority stake in Daimler-Chrysler's Debis IT arm. The stated aim back then was to be a global top three systems integration player by 2004. Now, some of those companies it is competing against are also thought to be circling other German acquisition targets.