Last year marked a slight decrease in the global tech mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity as compared to the previous year, 2018. At the end of 2019, a report by GlobalData revealed that there was a 25% year-on-year drop in the technology M&A deals.
When it comes to 2020, if January is anything to go by, there were some major deals in the tech industry. However, the same slowed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown and other restrictions. But it picked up pace marking some major tech mergers and acquisitions this year.
This month, we saw some important deals such as Salesforce’s acquisition of Slack for £20.7B, Pets at Home’s acquisition of Surrey-based telehealth provider The Vet Connection (TVC) for £15M and UK fintech SumUp’s acquisition of Goodtill for an undisclosed amount. These are only some recent acquisitions that took place and here we have covered the ones that are important.
Cisco acquires IMImobile for £547.4M
Founder/s: Shyam Bhat, Vishwanath Alluri
Founded year: 2000
Funding: £21.5M
Cisco and London-based IMImobile announced that they have reached agreement on the terms of a cash offer on December 4. Going by the same, Cisco will pay 595 pence per share for each share of IMImobile. The aggregate value of the deal accounts to $730M (nearly £547.4M) assuming fully diluted shares, cash and debt. With IMImobile, Cisco will provide an end-to-end customer interaction management solution and will be able to drive faster and smarter interactions.
New Relic acquires London-based Pixie Labs
Founder/s: Mark Pascarella
Founded year: 2013
Funding: NA
New Relic, which is a leader in observability announced the agreement to acquire London-based Pixie Labs for an undisclosed amount. With the addition of Pixie, New Relic’s opportunity to serve the rapidly growing Kubernetes market will expand and will drive the acceleration of observability across organisations of all sizes.
HealthHero acquires digital triage platform DoctorLink
Founder/s: Andrew Gardner
Founded year: 2016
Funding: £21.9M
London-based virtual care company HealthHero has acquired Doctorlink, a digital triage platform. The news about this acquisition comes after HealthHero purchased stakes in Eight Roads. Founded in 2019, HealthHero plans to incorporate Doctorlink’s technology into its primary care tool.
Drivit acquired by UK insurtech Zego
Founder/s: Carlos Abreu, Gonçalo Farinha
Founded year: 1996
Funding: NA
UK insurtech company Zego acquired Lisbon-based telematics startup Drivit in order to up its data game. However, the terms of the deal remain undisclosed. Drivit has been a longterm partner of Zego, and post acquisition, its team will be fully incorporated into the new company. Already, its technology is embedded into the Zego Sense app.
NortonLifeLock buys Avira for £270M
Founder/s: Tjark Auerbach
Founded year: 1986
Funding: NA
Cybersecurity company NortonLifeLock (previously known as Symantec) has agreed to acquire Avira, the German antivirus maker in a $360M (nearly £270M) cash deal. This acquisition is expected to be completed in Q1 2021. As a result of the acquisition, Avira CEO Travis Witteveen and CTO Matthias Ollig will become a part of the leadership team of NortonLifeLock.
Timico buys UK-based Arcus Cloud Services
Founder/s: Denis Kaminskiy
Founded year: 2019
Funding: NA
Cambridge-based Arcus Cloud Services, an Amazon Web Services partner and public sector consulting firm has been acquired by UK-based managed service provider Timico. As of now, the terms of the deal remain unknown but it is mentioned as a “multi-million-pound acquisition”. This acquisition is believed to strengthen Timico’s portfolio of services.
Civica acquired digital health software specialist InfoFlex
CEO: Marc Warburton
Founded year: 1996
Funding: NA
Civica, a global leader in software for public services acquired the UK-based healthcare software specialist Chameleon Information Management Services Limited and its subsidiary, Flex Software Limited, which trades as InfoFlex. This acquisition marks a significant strategic investment by Civica for its health division.
Acora acquired by Palatine Private Equity
CEO: David Rabson
Founded year: 1989
Funding: NA
Palatine Private Equity has acquired UK-based Acora, a managed IT services provider. The backing from Palatine Private Equity will allow the business to renew its focus on acquisitive growth and support Acora’s value creation plan as it looks to invest in people to support its processes and new technologies that will offer the best-in-class cloud transformation and support for clients.
PropertyHeads buys OurProperty
Founder/s: NA
Founded year: 2003
Funding: NA
PropertyHeads, a challenger portal and property social network completed a fundraising and acquired OurProperty in September. This fundraising round was led by Ben Davis, the CEO and founder of PropertyHeads.
Foundation SP
Founder/s: Simon Grosse
Founded year: 2012
Funding: NA
Investment company LDC agreed to invest in Foundation SP, a UK-based digital solutions and services provider but the terms of the deal were not disclosed. It will buy a minority stake in the company. By partnering with LDC, the company intends to scale its business.
Cazoo announced to buy Drover
Founder/s: Felix Leuschner
Founded year: 2016
Funding: £50M
Cazoo, the UK’s leading online car retailer, which makes buying a used car as simple and seamless as buying any other product online today, has announced that it has agreed to acquire Drover, the UK’s leading car subscription platform, for an undisclosed sum. The deal will combine Cazoo’s brand, platform and significant funding with Drover’s expertise and relationships in car subscription and, once integrated, will enable Cazoo to give its customers the option of purchasing, financing or subscribing to the thousands of cars on its platform.
The post UKTN roundup: 10 significant tech acquisitions of December 2020 appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).
