Open Text to buy Captaris for $131 million

(Reuters) - Business software maker Open Text Corp (OTC.TO)(OTEX.O) said it agreed to buy Captaris Inc CAPA.O, which makes software to manage documents, for about $131 million in cash to strengthen its Enterprise Content Management (ECM) business.

Open Text said its unit will buy Captaris for $4.80 per share, which represents a premium of about 28 percent to Captaris' Wednesday close.

"Captaris' technology will strengthen Open Text's ECM solutions by providing another on-ramp for integrating content into our ECM solutions," Open Text Chief Executive John Shackleton said in a statement.

The companies expect the deal to close by the end of the calendar year.

In March, a bid by private-equity firm Vector Capital to buy Captaris failed.

Captaris shares were up more than 24 percent at $4.65 before the bell. They closed at $3.74 Wednesday on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Shrutika Verma in Bangalore; Editing by Himani Sarkar)