Synchrony Communications, one of Cincinnati's biggest home-grown technology companies, has been sold to a Chicago software consolidator in an all-stock deal that will move Synchrony's 84 employees from downtown to Blue Ash.

        Terms of the acquisition, which was completed last week, were not disclosed. The deal will be announced this morning before the stock market opens.

        Synchrony's new owner is Divine Inc., originally known as Divine InterVentures. Founded by Andrew “Flip” Filipowski and taken public in July 2000, Divine started out as a technology incubator but has become an accumula tor of companies trading in their independence for a bigger, better-capitalized partner.

        Synchrony has less than $10 million in annual revenue from the sale of customer-management software to companies such as Bank of America, Milacron, Broadwing and West Corp.

        But it expected to have more than $20 million by now. Founder and CEO Mark Richey said 40 of its customers went out of busi ness in the technology shakeout that began in spring 2000. Meanwhile, the $38 million raised in two rounds of private financing was dissipating.

        “Synchrony was not funded to a cash-positive state,” said Mr. Richey, who owned about 10 percent of it stock. “After our last round of financing, it was well known to our investors that it would take one more round of funding to get us to a profitable state.”

        Mr. Richey said selling to Divine was Synchrony's best available option because of its assets, size and strategy of becoming a one-stop-shopping point for business-to-business software.

        “We have a pretty comfortable perception of the role we're going to play in the company,” Mr. Richey said. “This is going to be a very relevant software com pany going into 2002.”

        But Divine's breakneck aggregation of companies — including its purchase of MarchFirst of Chicago out of bankruptcy earlier this year — has come at a high cost to its shareholders.

        From an IPO price of $9 in July 2000, Divine's heavily diluted shares were down to 56 cents as of Monday's close. Analysts are concerned about its rate of spending cash and the potential difficulty of consolidating an empire that Mr. Filipowski thinks comprises 25 to 30 companies.

        In a telephone interview Monday, Mr. Filipowski chalked up the naysaying to “stupid people.” He said he doesn't “give a s---” about analysts' pleas for more details on Divine's consolidation strategy.

        What's important, he said, “is that we know what we're doing.”

        Mr. Filipowski knew what he was doing in 1999. That year, he sold his previous company, Platinum Technology, to Computer Associates International for $3.6 billion in cash.

        Mr. Filipowski called customer resource management the “last bastion” of business enterprise automation.

        “Synchrony fits into the interactive line of business, where you use all of the technology at your disposal to engage customers, whether it's by voice, e-mail or chat,” he said.

        Synchrony's 84 employees will begin moving next week from the Atrium building downtown to Divine's 200-employee, former MarchFirst facility in Blue Ash.

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