First published: 31st July 2008
Sophos, the anti-virus company based in Abindgdon, near Oxford, UK, has announced its intention to launch a voluntary public takeover offer of €217 million in cash for Utimaco, the encryption company based in Oberursel, near Frankfurt, Germany. In their history, both companies have grown their product offerings from technology fixes to full-featured solutions with management tools to meet the needs of businesses. Nowadays, Sophos's network access control, endpoint, web and email solutions simplify security to provide integrated defences against malware, spyware, intrusions, unwanted applications, spam, policy abuse, data leakage and compliance drift. Similarly, Utimaco’s range of data security solutions provide full 360 degree data protection for data at rest, data in motion and data in use.
This is not Sophos' first takeover, the company previously bought ActiveState and successfully integrated their advanced anti-spam solution, Puremessage, into their product line. It is also not the first acquisition of an encryption company by an anti-virus company: in 1997 Network Associates (formerly, and later, called McAfee Associates) bought PGP Inc. That combination was not successful, and the PGP assets were sold to PGP Corp., formed by former Network Associates employees, in 2002.
The offer is expected to be completed in October, as, in accordance with German takeover rules, Sophos has to publish a statutory announcement of a voluntary public takeover offer and issue the offer document describing the details of the offer to Utimaco’s shareholders, following approval by the German regulator Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin).