NVIDIA bought ARM Holdings
The world's largest manufacturer of video cards announced in September 2022 that it was acquiring the developer of ARM processors . The processors of the vast majority of smart devices are built on the ARM architecture: from the iPhone to vacuum cleaners. And ARM Holdings, accordingly, receives royalties for all this. As a result, NVIDIA has seriously strengthened its position among technology companies. The deal itself has not yet been completed, although the parties have already agreed on everything. Registration, according to NVIDIA estimates, will take about 18 months.
Oracle → Sun (2009), $8.2 billion
In the spring of 2009, Sun Microsystems announced its agreement to become part of Oracle. As in the case of PeopleSoft, US and European authorities were very concerned about this deal. After approval by Sun shareholders, another six months passed before the merger was approved by government agencies.
Sun said it could cut jobs and reduce profits by 25 percent due to the limbo and uncertainty in the eyes of customers. In January 2010, Oracle confirmed the completion of its takeover of Sun. According to Wikileaks, the approval of the deal by the European Commission was facilitated by pressure from the United States.
Almost all of Sun's executives left immediately after the takeover. Important developers also left the company, including the creators of Java, XML, Hudson and DTrace. Oracle stopped development of OpenSolaris and made the system closed, the new version was called Solaris Express.
The European Commission and many developers considered Oracle's acquisition of the widely used MySQL to be one of the most important problems with the Sun takeover. The company agreed to provide two licenses for the database management system - GPL and a commercial version. In addition, the company closed the OpenOffice.org project and fired all developers from its team. But the project was developed in a freely distributed offshoot of LibreOffice.
The acquisition of Sun allowed Oracle to become not only a software giant and control the use of Java, but also a manufacturer of server systems based on SPARC - servers developed by Sun together with Fujitsu. Oracle now provides technical support as long as the hardware meets all requirements. The company no longer depends on the developments of IBM, HP or EMC.
AMD teams up with Xilinx
Another major deal in the high technology sector. At the end of October, processor manufacturer AMD, the main competitor of Intel , which has recently gradually turned from catching up to leading, announced the acquisition of Xilinx, the largest American manufacturer of programmable logic integrated circuits. The transaction value was $35 billion, and the total capitalization of the combined corporation now reaches $135 billion. After the completion of the transaction (already in 2021), the corporation will be headed by AMD CEO Lisa Su.
Battle for analytics
In June 2022, the CRM market leader, ]Salesforce[/anchor] announced the acquisition of the data visualization market leader Tableau for $15.7 billion. Salesforce expressed its willingness to pay $15.7 billion in shares, with Tableau valued at $10.79 billion. Overpayment of $5 billion indicates the seriousness of the struggle in the analytics market and is, according to experts, a response to a similar purchase by Google - the Internet giant literally a week earlier bought business intelligence software developer Looker, though “for only” $2.6 billion. Almost Immediately after purchasing Tableu, Salesforces also acquired ClickSoftware, a developer of mobile employee management software, for $1.35 billion.
Facebook bought Giphy
The world's most popular social network continued to buy everything interesting on the Internet into its own property. This time - in May 2020 - the Giphy service was acquired. Funny gifs that users have been uploading there since 2013, as a result, were quickly integrated into the interface of the most popular social network in the world. Facebook paid $400 million for this pleasure.
Roskomnadzor will have the right to fine YouTube, Facebook and Twitter billions of dollars
Versatile Google
The Internet giant is investing not only in enterprise-level analytics, but also in products for end users. In winter ]acquired[/anchor] (for $40 million) part of ]Fossil[/anchor], a developer of smart watches, and in October a deal was announced between Google and one of the most famous manufacturers of wearable devices, Fitbit, its size was $2.1 billion
Johnson & Johnson bought Momenta Pharmaceuticals
A major biotechnology deal took place in August 2022. Known to Russians for its shampoo, and in fact one of the world leaders in the field of medical products, Johnson & Johnson has entered into an agreement to purchase Momenta Pharmaceuticals for $6.5 billion. This company specializes in drugs for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases, and its acquisition strengthened Johnson & Johnson's own division working in this area.
Broadcom bought Symantec
Broadcom has agreed with Symantec to buy its Enterprise Security division, which develops software for enterprise-level information security. Broadcom will pay $10.7 billion for it, although it initially planned to buy all of Symantec for $15 billion. Along with part of Symantec, Broadcom received the rights to its name.
Sberbank bought 2GIS
In June 2022, Sberbank had not yet turned into Sberbank, but was already intensively preparing for this. directory maps of Russian cities since 1999 . At the end of the 2010s, 2GIS was already one of the ten largest Russian Internet companies, and the monthly user audience exceeded 50 million people. The company at the time of the transaction was valued at 14.3 billion rubles. Sberbank received 72% of the shares, another 3% was received by O2O Holding, a joint venture of Sberbank and Mail.ru group.
Sberbank and Mail.ru: divorce and maiden name. What should shareholders expect?
Nvidia is refocusing on data centers
In March, Nvidia acquired Israel-based ]Mellanox[/anchor], a developer of enterprise-class Ethernet and InfiniBand inter-node communications solutions. The deal amounted to about $6.9 billion, Nvidia outbid another contender for Mellanox, ]Intel[/anchor], by approximately 10%. This purchase is another step in Nvidia's reorientation from the graphics accelerator market to the market for data center solutions.
O2O Holding bought Samokat and Kitchen in the District
That same joint venture between Sberbank and Mail.ru group is actively engaged in competing with Yandex and also becoming a domestic fintech giant . In April, it acquired a blocking stake of 75.6% of the shares of the express food delivery service Samokat, and in September 84.7% of the shares of the ready-made food delivery service Kitchen on the District, so that it would have something to deliver. Let us remind you that the taxi service Citymobil and another food delivery service Delivery Club were already purchased by Sberbank and Mail.ru group in 2019.
SUSE becomes independent
The Swedish investment fund EQT has completed the acquisition of SUSE, the developer of one of the oldest GNU/Linux distributions, from the British IT]Micro Focus[/anchor]. The deal, which Techcrunch estimates at $2.5 billion, was approved back in July 2022, but the parties announced its completion only on March 15, 2022. Now SUSE will be transformed into an independent company, and EQT will become its main shareholder.
Yandex parted ways with Sberbank
Against this background, Sberbank’s cooperation with Yandex, which at the same time was increasingly becoming its competitor, fell apart completely. And information has appeared before: the heads of Sberbank and Yandex are such different people that it is unclear why they decided to cooperate at all. And in June 2022, the relationship between the companies came to an end. Yandex took full ownership of the Yandex.Market , and Sberbank took over Yandex.Money , which it later renamed YuMoney.
Dating is now at a premium
]Blackstone[/anchor] announced the acquisition of a controlling stake in the MagicLab holding, which includes dating services Badoo and Bumble. The deal is estimated at approximately $3 billion. Previously, MagicLab wanted to buy ]Match Group[/anchor] (owner of a similar service Tinder) for $1 billion, but MagicLab founder Andrey Andreev considered the amount insufficient. The audience of the services is about half a billion people.
Yandex did not buy Tinkoff
This deal did not take place, but it is impossible not to mention it. Negotiations between the Russian Internet giant and TCS Group, which owns Tinkoff Bank, ended in nothing, or rather, in mutual accusations. Yandex really wanted to acquire a financial partner to replace the departed Sberbank , but Oleg Tinkov ultimately did not agree with the terms of the deal, calling it a takeover (we will not mention what the businessman called Yandex himself).
Experts: is it worth selling Yandex shares right now?
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Advice from a consultant: Secrets of successful mergers and acquisitions
Alexander Gorin Andrea Borgioni
Only three out of 10 mergers or acquisitions in global practice are successful. What are the reasons for success or failure in each case? Based on our experience in conducting mergers and acquisitions projects in the banking sector, we have identified several key factors for the successful implementation of such transactions.
Preparation for a transaction must begin with a comprehensive assessment and audit of companies in all areas: from financial performance and strategy to personnel compliance, corporate culture and legal aspects. The consequences of a superficial audit and assessment can result in a significant increase in cost and complexity of the merger process.
Immediately after a transaction is completed, the new structure's management must quickly make a number of critical decisions (for example, the appointment of key managers, brand and location selection) in order to create - as quickly as possible - a transparent work environment and a cohesive team that will deal with both solving day-to-day problems and and integration support.
“The first 100 days” largely determine the success of integration. The most cost-critical activities should be performed with the highest priority. Less urgent tasks can and should be postponed to later phases. It is necessary to immediately begin implementing several projects that can bring quick and tangible results - “quick wins”. In this case, it is necessary to proceed from their significance for shareholders. For example, priority tasks should include the centralization of some services, cross-selling of new winning products (sold by separate integrated structures before the merger), effective capital management, integration of IT and infrastructure, human resources services, etc.
Managing the post-transaction integration phase is an extremely complex process: we believe that it makes sense to create a dedicated organizational structure to implement it. It must have the necessary competence and tools for detailed risk assessment, planning of necessary activities, organization and implementation of work, monitoring and adjustment of the integration process.
In the case of large transactions, information technology is undoubtedly one of the key factors for the success of a merger or acquisition. The integration process will include application management, hardware management, and application development functions for the front and back office. The main task is to create a unified information platform for the new bank as quickly as possible (and thus learn to speak “the same language”). Our experience shows that managers often underestimate this aspect.
We usually recommend a range of activities. First of all, it is necessary to competently assess the differences between existing applications and technology platforms and quickly determine the target IT system and platform for transition. At the same time, for each area of integration, it is also important to evaluate possible ways to improve existing applications.
It is equally important to clearly define the IT integration strategy, including managing the transition phase, effectively estimating time and costs, and planning the required capacity. And, of course, for the successful implementation of the chosen path, it is necessary to effectively transition to the target IT architecture.
For rapidly growing banking groups planning multiple mergers, integration skills must be built and leveraged.
Our experience has shown that creating a dedicated organizational structure that combines the tools to provide an integrated approach to managing business strategies, processes, product lines, information technology and people during a merger/acquisition can significantly reduce the risks and costs of both subsequent mergers. It is important that this structure includes people with knowledge of the companies being merged, integration skills gained from experience in implementing similar transactions, and strong support from senior management.
The presence of such a structure often serves as a kind of guarantee both for the management and shareholders of integrated banks, and for market analysts.
Finally, the project team may benefit from specific software products based on specific experience in merging projects. They will allow you to avoid unnecessary errors and significantly reduce risks and integration time.
Authors: managing partner of the Moscow office of Accenture, senior manager of the Milan office of Accenture
FSBU REVIEW 6/2020, 26/2020
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Corel and Parallels resold in the US
The owner of ]Corel[/anchor] sold it to the US investment group KKR. The new owner received all its software products, including those that previously belonged to the Russian IT-]Parallels[/anchor]. The estimated transaction amount is $1 billion.
