The endpoint security market today saw the start of another acquisition with private equity firm Thoma Bravo offering to acquire Sophos for $7.40 per share, or about $3.9 billion. Sophos' board of directors plans to "unanimously recommend" the offer to its shareholders.
Thoma Bravo has more than $35 billion in investor commitments and has acquired more than 200 software and technology companies. In recent years it has tightened its focus on security with acquisitions of Barracuda, Veracode, Imperva, and LogRhythm. In 2017 it bought a minority stake in McAfee as part of its spinout from Intel and was rumored to buy the company. The private equity firm has also invested in Blue Coat, ConnectWise, Digicert, and Entrust.
Now it has eyes on UK-based endpoint security firm Sophos, which offers security tools for endpoint protection, managed services, firewall, and public cloud to a customer base of 400,000 businesses. Its recent acquisitions include Rook Security, DarkBytes, and Avid Secure.
Thoma Bravo approached Sophos in June, and the two companies have been in talks since, Sophos CEO Kris Hagerman said in an interview with Dark Reading. If all goes as planned, the acquisition should be complete and the deal closed sometime in the first quarter of 2020.
"We feel that given Thoma Bravo's track record in cybersecurity, and experience and knowledge in that space, they're in a great position to accelerate Sophos' leadership ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
