IT FACTORY will be the new main sponsor in cooperation with Saxo Bank from January 1 2009 and 3 years onwards. The team will be named Team Saxo Bank – IT FACTORY.

From 1 January 2009, Bjarne Riis will have two main Danish sponsors for the team. IT FACTORY will become a main sponsor together with Saxo Bank. The parties have formed a three-year contract, which will offer the team distinct new possibilities, states Bjarne Riis:

“With Saxo Bank and now also IT FACTORY, we have established a foundation that will take us a long way into the future. We now have two strong, visionary companies supporting us and a budget enabling us to realize our ambitions to remain the world’s greatest cycling team. I am very much looking forward to the cooperation, which we begin next year and I am convinced that we will make an impressive and enduring mark on the sport. The team has sky-high ambitions and, with these two sponsors, we are now able to fulfill them,” says Riis.

CEO of IT FACTORY, Stein Bagger, says about the cooperation: “When I was contacted by Bjarne Riis offering IT FACTORY the chance to become a sponsor, I told him that this would only be a possibility if IT FACTORY could become the main sponsor. I am therefore pleased that Saxo Bank has agreed to share the sponsorship with us and I am convinced that we will have a successful cooperation. We certainly have many things in common. We are both young companies, we are both on our way to becoming global, and, like Bjarne Riis, we wish to be the best in our field”.

IT FACTORY has two objectives with the sponsorship.

“Our first objective is to increase global awareness of our company and, not least, of our new technology “Platform as a Service” or PaaS,” says Stein Bagger. “This technology can take basically any software, including existing software, online, what no other company has been able to do before. This will revolutionize the way we develop and distribute software in the future”.

Secondly, IT FACTORY wishes to use the sponsorship to be able to make an ambitious difference in anti-doping. “The team and Bjarne Riis have already entered into a groundbreaking cooperation on the work against doping with Rasmus Damsgaard, one of the world’s leading experts in this area. We believe that we can help enhance this system with our technology and software. Our mission is to help the bicycle race sport and other sports to compete on equal terms. The services we will be offering will become freely available to any relevant organizations and athletes who may benefit from them,” states Stein Bagger.

The two founders and co-CEOs of Saxo Bank, Kim Fournais and Lars Seier Christensen, state: “We have had a great partnership with CSC, and we are certain that we will share that sentiment together with IT FACTORY. The foundation we have built for the next three years is even more solid than anyone could have predicted when we initially decided to sponsor the team. Bjarne and his amazing riders will now be able to focus on the important tasks at hand which include keeping their eyes on the prize and continuing to be the world’s greatest cycling team. We are confident that this agreement will serve advantageous to all three parties”.