Thoma Bravo To Buy Sophos For $3.9 Billion

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo said today it plans to buy UK-based cyber-security giant Sophos for $7.40 per share, for a total value of $3.9 billion, both companies announced today. From a report: The sale price represents a 37% premium on the Sophos market trading price, as recorded on Friday, at the end of the trading. The Sophos board of directors said they plan to "unanimously recommend" the acquisition offer to their shareholders. Before today's announcement, Thoma Bravo acquired a minority stake in McAfee last year and was rumored to be interested in buying the whole company. It is unclear how today's Sophos acquisition will impact plans to buy McAfee, but the two companies -- Sophos and McAfee -- are classic rivals on the cyber-security market and share a product portfolio, so the door seems to have closed on the McAfee deal.

Oh goody, another company loaded with debt

[rsilvergun]

from a leveraged [theguardian.com] buyout [businessinsider.com]. Just what our very stable economy needed.

Soft vowel movement

[goombah99]

Headline is lexographically interesting since it has three words ending in soft vowel sounds

Of course they will.

[fahrbot-bot]

The sale price represents a 37% premium on the Sophos market trading price ... The Sophos board of directors said they plan to "unanimously recommend" the acquisition offer to their shareholders.

You don't look a gift golden horse parachute in the mouth - or something like that.

Exactly as I said:

[BAReFO0t]

Desperate girls ... in their weakest moment ... where it's "work for the pimp"/"accept the offer from the loan sharks" or die.

Frankly, dying promptly is the better option. Rather than slowly being bled dry because lots of blood "looks fine" to vamipr...err...I mean "investors".
Nothing hurts more, as an owner of a company, than to see their baby die the most painful slow death possible. Suicide is by far not the worst way to go. (Ask any Gulag victim.)

The Mob

[sdinfoserv]

VC / "private equity" groups buying companies is just like the mob back in the '50's-'70s. Buy a company, bleed it dry, set the carcass on fire, pocket the insurance money and walk away.

Re:

[postbigbang]

It might not be that bad at all. The buying public has become sensitive to bleeding the cash cow dry. Look at how far Symantec has fallen from grace as a good example. Sophos is less of a one-trick-pony than many other organizations. I'm cautiously optimistic that it's not a pump & dump, but perhaps a method to solidify security rather than become yet-another-extortion-ring.

Re:

[EvilSS]

Thomas Bravo has a pretty decent portfolio of companies that seem to be doing just fine under their ownership.

UNDER their ownsership. That is the point!

[BAReFO0t]

So dumb people buy them for big money. And *then* notice they only got the husk, when it collapses.

Those companies are only "doing fine" from a bleeding out a fine amount of profit towards the equity firm. Which, for the company itself, is not fine at all!

Re:

[EvilSS]

I've worked with companies that were purchased by private equity companies. Hell, I've worked FOR a company that was bought by one. While "corporate raiders" still exist, believe it or not the end goal for most of these is to make the company successful, build up their business revenue, and either keep it or spin it back out as a public company. If you are creating "husks" you will get a reputation for that and it won't go well for you trying to do that in the future. Most are not some kind of vampire tryin

Worse:

[BAReFO0t]

They also short the company's stock afterwards.

They are the corporate version of a pimp working desperate girls to death and robbing their dead bodies.

RIP Sophos.

[BAReFO0t]

Just so you know: "Private Equity" firms exist, to pimp out companies to sell them to the highest bidder. ONLY... I repeat, ONLY to sell them. Not to make them successful. Quite the opposite. All the valuables and profits will be transferred to the equity firm, and the sold company will only be an empty husk. In fact, they actively short the company afterwards, if it is publicly traded, so squeeze out the last bits.
Like a pimp who works his prostitute to death, and then takes the last john's money from her