Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC) has agreed to purchase Sunnyvale, California-based security and network technology provider Blue Coat Inc. for approximately $4.65 billion cash in an effort to help protect government and enterprise customers from cybersecurity threats.
Greg Clark, CEO of Blue Coat, will take the helm at Symantec as CEO as well as join the Mountain View, California-based company’s board of directors upon closing of the transaction, Blue Coat said Sunday.
Both companies expect to close the deal in the third calendar quarter of 2016, pending closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
Blue Coat projects the combined company will generate $4.4 billion in revenues for fiscal year 2016 on a pro-forma, non-GAAP basis and that enterprise security will account for 62 percent of revenues.
The merged entity will combine Symantec’s threat telemetry with Blue Coat’s networks and cloud security offerings to help protect endpoints and servers from cyber threats and help secure email and web transactions.
“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, †said Dan Schulman, chairman of Symantec.
Schulman will continue to lead Symantec’s board of directors as chairman and Thomas Seifert will retain his role as chief financial officer of Symantec after the acquisition is completed.
