Blue Coat Systems seemed poised to begin life as a public company, after selling itself to a private equity firm last year.
However, the cybersecurity software company now plans to sell itself to Symantec instead.
Blue Coat on Sunday said that it would sell itself to Symantec for US$4.65 billion.
As part of the deal, Blue Coat CEO Greg Clark is to take over as the CEO of the combined security software maker.
To help finance the transaction, Blue Coat’s existing majority investor, Bain Capital, is to invest an additional US$750 million in the deal. The private equity firm Silver Lake, which invested US$500 million in Symantec in February, is to invest an additional US$500 million.
The deal would create a big provider of security products, both the traditional anti-virus kind that has long been Symantec’s focus and the newer online protection services in which Blue Coat has specialized.
Executives see little overlap between the two businesses.
“With this transaction, we will have the scale, portfolio and resources necessary to usher in a new era of innovation designed to help protect large customers and individual consumers against insider threats and sophisticated cybercriminals,” Symantec chairman Dan Schulman said in a statement.
In selling itself to Symantec, Blue Coat is to abandon its effort to go public, after having filed plans to do so earlier this month. Many companies weighing an initial public offering (IPO) also run a private sales process, choosing to sell themselves if they receive an attractive enough offer.
Although Blue Coat did not formally put itself up for sale, it received interest from a number of potential buyers, and held talks primarily with Symantec.
Blue Coat has had a number of private equity owners in recent years, including both Bain Capital and, before that, Thoma Bravo.
In its IPO prospectus, Blue Coat said it lost US$289 million on top of US$598 million in sales for the 12 months that ended April 30. That compares with a US$271 million loss on top of nearly US$569 million in sales for the same period a year before.
However, the company has sought to grow itself under Bain Capital, having made a number of acquisitions to bolster its capabilities.
“This represented a compelling opportunity for us because we could realize some gains for our investors but also reinvest into the combined company,” Bain Capital managing director David Humphrey said.
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