Tag: buyout

Redmond wants a Blackberry slice

Posted on May 25, 2015 by - News

blackberry tartThe dark satanic rumour mill is churning out a hell on earth yarns claiming that Microsoft is close to buying up a slice of the canadian telecommunications company BlackBerry.

A few other tech companies like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei are also amongst those interested in buying the outfit but Microsoft has been wining and dining a few investment firms to assess their chances of taking over BlackBerry.

Its plan is to upgrade its intensity in the business mobile solution segment and its patent portfolio in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), as well as mobile platform and communications sectors.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturers are mainly intended to invest in BlackBerry so that they can improve their brand visibility across US and European business sectors.

So far it is all rumour and speculation but BlackBerry has frequently been tipped to be ready for buying out before and it has never happened.  However sources in the Redmond lair have admitted that the stuffed head of Blackberry would look nice on its CEO’s wall.

BlackBerry said recently that it will  lay off number of employments across the globe and will merge its device software, hardware and applications business. It also indicated that it was “changing assets to profit” by development opportunities and accomplish benefit over all regions of business.

So far that involves scaling down its mobile phone division, which might mean Microsoft  will have to move fast if it there is going to be anything left of Blackberry.

Infomatica sold for $5.3 billion

Posted on April 8, 2015 by - News

20120313_InformaticaBusiness software maker Informatica has just sold itself for $5.3 billion to private equity firms Permira Funds and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).

This means that Informatica shareholders will get $48.75 per share in cash. But the sale does represent a failure by Infomatica  to see off a buy out.

Activist hedge fund Elliott Management has an 8 percent stake in Informatica in January and said it was speaking to the company about ways to maximize shareholder value. In fact word on the street was it was thinking of buying it.

Informatica has been looking to hire financial advisers to help it defend itself from Elliott, after failing to sell itself in January.

Jesse Cohn, head of U.S. equity activism at Elliott said that the hedge fund supported the new deal.

Informatica helps companies integrate and analyse data. It counts Western Union, Citrix Systems, American Airlines Group and Bank of New York Mellon among its customers.

The outfit competes with Tibco, which was taken private for $4.3 billion in December by private equity firm Vista Equity Partners.

“Informatica … is better positioned (than Tibco) to benefit from the adoption of cloud technologies,” Mizuho Securities analyst Abhey Lamba wrote in a note on Monday which did not end up on his fridge.

Analysts have said the company’s shift to cloud and subscription revenue is pressuring margins.

 

Intel in talks to buy Altera

Posted on March 28, 2015 by - News

Intel Q4_14_ResultsLike something out of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book, “The Black Swan”, the Wall Street Journal reported that Intel  was in talks to buy Altera Corp. Taleb also predicts that the so called experts will then tell us why it makes perfectly good sense for Intel to acquire Altera – all after the fact of course.

To get an idea what’s involved on the money side; Intel’s market capitalisation is around $140 Billion with Altera at about $10.4 billion.

What premium Intel would have to pay is, of course, one of the finer points of the ongoing discussion. As a basis of estimate analysts are using Intel’s last acquisition of McAfee at $7.7 Billion as a benchmark indicating the acquisition could be in excess of $14 Billion making it the company’s largest acquisition to date if consummated.

Intel stock, which had risen 18% in the past year, rose 6.4% to $32 following the report of the potential acquisition. Altera stock, down 2.5% in the past 12 months, jumped 28% Friday to $44.41.

So, as a sort of red herring for acceptance of the deal, the market reacted positively – considered good feedback for the talks to continue.

Techeye Take – Why Altera?

Altera is one of the anointed companies qualified to run their programmable FPGAs on Intel’s 14 nm Fabs. The two companies have been working closely together in a number of areas and in some cases with involved third parties. Altera FPGAs, for the most part, are not involved in the consumer electronics segment but are directed almost wholly at the high end of the server and HPC markets.

We believe Intel has become deeply involved (nay dependent) on Altera’s Programmable FPGAs in their next generation data center architecture and began suffering pangs of paranoia over the company becoming too exposed to outside influences deciding that complete control over Altera was their only option (taken from Andy Grove’s guidebook; “Only the Paranoid Survive’). [Altera used to belong to AMD, Ed.]

 

Trustmarque in £43 mill management buyout

Posted on June 10, 2013 by - News

TrustmarqueYork-based Trustmarque has been bought out by its management to the tune of £43 million.

The deal was underwritten by Dunedin which is a UK mid-market buyout house.

Trustmarque has been in operation for over 25 years and it helps organisations license, deploy and manage Microsoft, VMware, and McAfee software.
It made £130 million for the year ended 31 August 2012 and it is hoped that Dunedin’s investment will enable Trustmarque to expand.

The company hires 180 people at three sites in York, Bracknell and Edinburgh and currently serves over 1,200 clients including RBS, Lloyds Banking Group, Sainsbury’s and Capita. Public sector clients include the NHS, Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Justice, HMRC, local authorities and NHS trusts throughout England, Scotland and Wales.

Trustmarque was the first Microsoft partner to achieve Gold licensing status and remains a top software and consulting services supplier to the UK Government.

The Sunday Times ranked it as number 54 in their 2013 league of the best small companies to work for in the UK and the company has also been shortlisted by the National Business Awards scheme.

Mark Ligertwood, partner at Dunedin said that Trustmarque esd s market-leader with a clearly positioned brand and an exceptional reputation within both the commercial and public sectors.

“The UK market for software and IT services is currently worth an estimated £40bn and is expected to grow at two percent to five percent to 2016,” Ligertwood said.

It appears the company’s management has a cunning plan to expand and it is a business plan that Dunedin thinks has legs.

Scott Haddow, CEO of Trustmarque said that Trustmarque has developed significantly over the last four years. His ambition is to cement our position as an independent end-to-end technology services provider and the trusted adviser of choice for blue chip and large government enterprises.

Trustmarque was previously owned by LDC which grew it from an IT reseller into a value-added provider of IT services, growing services-driven revenues to 33 per cent of turnover.

In 2011, Trustmarque bought Nimbus Technology Systems as part of a move to provide cloud-based services.