Global private equity investors Advent International (Advent) has completed its offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of Forescout Technologies’ common stock for USD29.00 per share, without interest and subject to any applicable withholding taxes, net to the seller in cash. Advent intends to complete the acquisition of Forescout imminently through a second-step merger.
Advent has partnered with Crosspoint Capital Partners (Crosspoint Capital), a private equity investment firm focused on the cybersecurity and privacy industries, on this transaction. Together they will provide Forescout with resources and expertise to help drive continued innovation and scale in Enterprise of Things security, delivering solutions to address the massive and evolving attack surface that businesses and organisations need to monitor and secure every day.
“We live in an age where a smart thermometer in a lobby fish tank can provide hackers unfettered access to a company’s most sensitive data,” says Bryan Taylor, head of Advent’s technology investment team and a Managing Partner in Palo Alto. “At this pivotal moment in the growth and proliferation of the Enterprise of Things, Forescout’s innovative solutions position it to be the partner of choice for enterprise customers managing the formidable challenges of monitoring and protecting their infrastructure and data. We are thrilled to partner with the Forescout team and look forward to working with Crosspoint Capital to leverage our collective cyber software expertise and significant operational resources to support Forescout’s continued innovation and address a large, growing market opportunity.”
Michael DeCesare, CEO and President of Forescout, says: “Protecting organisations and their billions of network-connected devices and components is one of the most critical security issues of our time, and something Forescout addresses better than anyone as we deliver the only solution that actively defends the Enterprise of Things at scale. Together with Advent and Crosspoint Capital, we will be even better positioned to accelerate our innovation roadmap and strategic cloud and business transformation. As we embark today on this exciting new chapter, I want to thank all Forescout employees around the world. This is a testament to their hard work and commitment, and I am proud to continue this journey alongside them as we deliver on our technology, strategy and customer experience goals.”
“Forescout has been a pioneer and is an industry leader in identifying, segmenting and controlling the technology that underpins every enterprise,” says Greg Clark, Forescout Board Member and Managing Partner at Crosspoint Capital. “Risks that have come from the explosion of IoT and the proliferation of cloud workloads and virtual entities have put Forescout at the epicenter of one of the biggest and most pressing areas of cybersecurity. As a former customer of Forescout, I’ve seen first-hand the incredible visibility and control that Forescout’s differentiated technology provides across every connected Thing, physical or virtual, that is trying to access corporate resources. As a member of the Board, I look forward to helping the company build on its strong track record, further strengthen its market position and continue to advance its cloud strategy.”
