Enterprise communications giant Mitel Networks Corp. has agreed a $1.96 billion deal to acquire its larger unified communications rival Polycom Inc.

The deal marks another successful gambit from the infamous ‘activist investor’ firm Elliott Management Inc., which previously helped to influence Dell Inc.’s massive $67 billion takeover of storage giant EMC corp. In this case, Elliott actually took a stake in both businesses before agitating for the merger.

Elliott disclosed it has snapped up a 6.6 percent in Polycom in October last year, as well as 9.6 percent chunk of Mitel in the same month. Ever since then, the firm has been pressing for a merger between the two comms giants.

Under the terms of the deal, Polycom stockholders will receive $3.12 in cash and 1.31 Mitel shares for each Polycom share. Based on Thursday’s close, the deal values Polycom at $13.44 a share. On Friday, Polycom shares fell 2% to $12.02, while Mitel dropped 9.6% to $7.12.

“The combination of Mitel and Polycom makes perfect strategic and financial sense,” said Jesse Cohn, senior portfolio manager at Elliott. “The combined business will have far greater scale than either company alone, the ability to deliver a full array of products to customers, and the means to invest behind product areas that will provide stability and growth for the future.”

The newly expanded group’s headquarters will be based in Canada, the home of Mitel, operating under the Mitel banner. However, the Polycom brand will still be retained in many parts of the new company’s portfolio. Current Mitel CEO Richard McBee will become CEO of the new organization, while CFO Steve Spooner will retain the same position once the merger is complete. It’s expected that two of Polycom’s directors will get a seat on the board.

Once the deal is completed, the newly merged firm will count some 7,700 employees and run rate revenues of $2.5 billion. It will also claim to be one of the two biggest business cloud communications firms in the world.

The deal is probably a good one for Polycom, which has struggled under pressure from rivals like Cisco Systems Ltd., not to mention free messenger services like Skype and Slack.

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