SECURITY
SECURITY
SECURITY
FireEye to sell product group in $1.2B deal, will retain Mandiant business
Cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc. today announced that it will sell its products group to private equity company Symphony Technology Group for $1.2 billion.
Under the deal, FireEye is also selling its name and core business but will retain assets that were acquired from Mandiant Inc. in a $1 billion stock-and-cash deal in 2014.
The sale is described as separating FireEye’s network, email, endpoint and cloud security products, along with the related security management and orchestration platform, from Mandiant’s controls-agnostic software and services. The goal is “enabling both organizations to accelerate growth investments, pursue new go-to-market pathways, and focus innovation on their respective solutions.” In effect, Mandiant returns as a separate company years after it was acquired.
“We believe this separation will unlock our high-growth Mandiant Solutions business and allow both organizations to better serve customers,” FireEye Chief Executive Officer Kevin Mandia said in a statement. “After closing, we will be able to concentrate exclusively on scaling our intelligence and frontline expertise through the Mandiant Advantage platform, while the FireEye Products business will be able to prioritize investment on its cloud-first security product portfolio.”
Mandiant was founded in 2004 and raised $70 million in venture capital funding before FireEye acquired it, according to data from Crunchbase.
It’s arguably an odd deal. Spinning off an acquired company is not irregular in the tech sector, but a company selling off its main business to revive an acquired company as a standalone business is.
And there’s more. FireEye, which is a publicly traded company, will become Mandiant Inc. under the deal, as the Mandiant assets not acquired will take over the traded FireEye listed stock.
According to data from Tracxn, STG Partners LLC had made 13 acquisitions and 25 investments in the past. Notable acquisitions from the private equity group include RSA in a $2.1 billion deal back in 1982 and more recently the acquisitions of Sciforma, Trace One (Société par Actions Simplifiée) and CommPartners LLC, all in March.
Image: FireEye
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