Sizing the SaaS M&A market

Posted by on January 31, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada Traditional IT service providers, accustomed to an on-premises model of delivering products and services, have been rapidly buying into the SaaS sector to fulfill enterprises’ demand for SaaS offerings. The result has been a rapid increase in both the volume and value of SaaS deals announced. The most notable are Oracle’s RightNow [...]

Intel: the latest tech giant to buy patents

Posted by on January 27, 2012

Contact: Thejeswi Venkatesh Intel has announced the acquisition of 190 patents, 170 patent applications and video codec software from RealNetworks for $120m. The transaction comes just eight months after Intel bought SiPort, a Santa Clara, California-based company that made audio-processing semiconductors. We see these moves as an indication that Intel wants to integrate more media [...]

A vote of confidence?

Posted by on January 26, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada There’s no denying that behavior in the equity markets is one of the main influencers on big-ticket M&A. Stock market stability provides a vote of confidence for corporate acquirers to pursue large, game-changing deals. Without stable markets, the valuation gap between buyers and sellers becomes too wide for potential sellers to accept. [...]

NTT continues global expansion, bags Netmagic

Posted by on January 25, 2012

Contact: Ben Kolada NTT Communications has made another move in the Indian datacenter services market, this time taking a 74% stake in Netmagic Solutions. Netmagic provides managed hosting, colocation and infrastructure management services, among others, from seven datacenters throughout India. This is the latest in a growing line of transactions NTT has inked that have [...]

The ‘state of the union’ for tech unions

Posted by on January 19, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly To get a sense of what we might see in tech M&A in 2012, we looked back on the previous year to highlight some of the trends and marquee transactions that we expect to continue to shape the market. In our annual ‘state of the union’ report, we noted that both the [...]

IGT rolls dice on Facebook gaming, but hedges bet

Posted by on January 13, 2012

Contact: Brian Satterfield In yet another sign of the power of social networking, casino gaming systems maker IGT agreed on Thursday to purchase Facebook casino videogame startup Double Down Interactive for a potential consideration of up to $500m. The Double Down deal highlights the growing importance of social networking websites to traditional gaming companies, as [...]

Social software M&A on the uptick in 2011

Posted by on January 11, 2012

Contact: Brian Satterfield As more businesses leverage social networking websites for marketing and customer support purposes, many big-name buyers are finding social media software vendors to be increasingly attractive targets. The number of deals in the sector rose more than 150% in 2011 from 2010, while spending during that same period soared more than five-fold [...]

PE firms play small ball

Posted by on January 4, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly After years of writing multibillion-dollar checks in some of the largest tech transactions, private equity (PE) shops dramatically scaled back their purchases in 2011. The single biggest deal last year (The Blackstone Group’s $3bn take-private of healthcare technology vendor Emdeon) only ranked 15th among the largest transactions in 2011. It was the [...]

A continuing M&A recovery in 2011

Posted by on January 3, 2012

Contact: Brenon Daly The choppiness that was felt in the overall M&A market in 2011 also came through in the totals for the year. While the number of transactions hit a five-year high, spending on tech deals in 2011 didn’t necessarily keep pace. The total value of transactions announced last year around the globe rose [...]