"The company would be ready for converting its GDS into ADR, or go for a listing on the technology-heavy Nasdaq, by mid-2001," Ganesh Natarajan, managing director of Aptech Ltd told.

Aptech which listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) with a 75 million dollar GDS float in July this year, currently has 52,26,481 equity shares representing 10,452,962 GDS.

Natarajan said that the American listing would allow the company to acquire firms through stock swaps as compared to the cash deals that Aptech was currently using for takeovers.

"The move would enable us to use stock as currency for further acquisitions, thus giving us more flexibility in buyouts," he said.

The company would also invest upto 60 million dollars to expand its operations by establishing overseas subsidiaries and development centres, and acquiring IT services companies.

The company would set up three overseas proximity development centres, two in US and one in UK with an initial investment of 15 million dollars by early next year, Natarajan said.

Within India, the developments operations would be strengthened by a fourth development facility in Mumbai, Natarajan said.On the marketing side, the company is planning to set up operations in France, Germany and Italy over the next few months, he said, adding that Aptech would establish a subsidiary in Japan by the year end.

In addition, Aptech, which recently acquired US-based e-commerce company SpecSoft for 9.7 million dollars, has shortlisted three firms, one in New York and two in Mid West for a takeover, having evaluated about 60 companies overall."We have set aside about 15 million dollars for the acquisition and expect the takeover to be completed by end of this year," he said.

The company, which plans to acquire one US IT company had deployed a team at San Jose to review the shorlisted firms.

Natarajan said that about 15 million dollar GDS proceeds would be used for repaying the company's debts, and added that the Aptech expected to be debt free by the year end.

The company's equity structure currently has about 30 per cent of stake each with promoters and foreign institutional investors, about 16 per cent with FIs, five per cent with employees and the balance with the public.