Day: March 10, 2004

AMS acquired and split up; my memory has just been sold

The Yahoo newswire says that Canadian IT consulting firm CGI is buying American Management Systems (AMS), the consulting firm at which I was a principal before I left for business school. The interesting parts?

  1. CGI is paying a 25% premium ($858 million) over the market cap ($657 million) of the stock (consistent with the feelings of many former and present AMSers that the stock was undervalued).
  2. As part of the deal, the defense and intelligence assets of AMS are being sold, for $415 million… to AMS rival CACI.

I wonder how my old teammates are being affected by this. We beat CACI to win the Standard Procurement System award, but a lot has changed since 1997 and I’m sure there’s a lot of value in combining the joint resources of the two businesses.

Also, what a difference a few years (and the war on terror) make. Four years ago, I don’t think I would have predicted that the defense and intelligence businesses would have a market cap of almost half the total value of AMS.

Open letter to a Glee Club student

glee club after my last lawn concert 1994

I started thinking about my days in the Virginia Glee Club a few weeks back. Probably because of my imminent 10-year reunion. Then out of the blue I got an email from a current Club member and Clubhouse resident who had found my page about my time in the group.

I reprint my reply to him here, for the ten or fifteen other Glee Club members who might see it and remember too.

Sounds like you’re having a great time with Club. I remember my days in the group fondly.

I never lived in the Clubhouse (I was planning to my fourth year but I turned into a damned Lawnie instead), but I have many fond memories of flopping on, sleeping on, and drinking on the couch. And of cleaning the house after parties. Wait, those aren’t fond memories; they’re kind of nauseating. Does the basement still flood every winter?

My fonder memories are of rehearsing in Old Cabell, B-012; of making fun of the bass section; of long bus trips to, um, sing with young women at institutions of higher (or at least more Northern) learning; and of performing some of the best music ever written. There hasn’t been a year since I graduated that I haven’t been singing with one group or another, and none of them have come close to the camaraderie of Club (well, maybe one, but that was a special case; the guys sang at my wedding, and one of them was a fellow Club alum).

The mule, however, is new to me. What’s the story there?

Hope you’re enjoying what the Club web site says is your fifth year. (I see some things haven’t changed at Virginia. 🙂 ) Please give the group my best. If you ever travel as far west as Seattle, drop in; my door is always open.

Yours in VMHLB,
Tim Jarrett
Club 1990-1994