US SOFTWARE firm Amdocs received a $45 million (€34.1 million) dividend from its Irish unit last year, two months before the business acquired Irish company ChangingWorlds for an initial cash consideration of $65 million

Regulatory filings for Amdocs Software Systems Ltd, which runs the Irish operation, show that the dividend payment was made on September 3rd. The ChangingWorlds transaction was executed on November 5th.

The dividend payment from the Irish unit last September followed its payment of a $335 million dividend in 2006, the filings reveal. Amdocs, which provides software for telecoms billing, has production and operating centres in China, Cyprus, India and Israel.

According to the filings, operating profit at Amdocs’ Irish unit rose more than five fold in 2007 to $85.8 million. Amdocs employed 78 Irish staff in that period, less than 1 per cent of its global workforce. Amdocs Software Systems achieved a 26 per cent increase in turnover to $1 billion in 2007 from $799.2 million in 2006. The Irish unit, registered in Dublin, accounted for 35 per cent of global turnover in 2007. It made pretax profits of $95.2 million in 2007, an increase of 73 per cent from $54.9 million the previous year.