British consulting firm Axon Group PLC has agreed to accept a £441 million (US$785 million) bid from India’s HCL Technologies Ltd, rejecting an earlier offer by India’s Infosys Technologies Ltd, company officials said.

HCL offered to buy Axon for 650 pence a share in cash on September 26, an 8.3% premium to the 600 pence per share offer Infosys had made six days earlier. The acquisition, the largest by an Indian IT company, comes at a time of difficulty for India’s information technology sector, which depends heavily on US financial services firms that have been hit hard by the credit crisis.

HCLT does business in 19 countries, with a strong manufacturing client base and a growing life sciences business. Last fiscal year, HCLT relied on the US market for 57.4% of its business, but more than two-thirds of revenues came from non-financial services companies.

HCLT has arranged a £400 million loan from Standard Chartered Bank for the deal. Rest wil be paid from internal accruals, Nayar added.

Axon had reported a profit before tax of £29.5 million for the year ended December 2007. At the present HCLT offer, Axon is valued at 15 times of the pre tax profit. On the other hand, HCLT is quoting at 13.87 times of its post tax profit. A merchant banker pointed out that HCLT is offering higher than the price at which its own share is quoting in the market.