Francisco and Elliott Are in Talks to Buy LogMeIn
Francisco and Elliott Are in Talks to Buy LogMeIn
(Bloomberg) -- Private equity firm Francisco Partners Management has partnered with hedge fund Elliott Management Corp. in a bid to take workplace software provider LogMeIn Inc. private for more than $4 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The firms are in advanced discussions to acquire LogMein and could announce a deal in the coming weeks, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. No final decision has been made and talks could fall through, the people said.
Representatives for LogMeIn and Elliott declined to comment. A representative for Francisco Partners didn’t respond to a request for comment.
LogMeIn’s shares rose more than 10% on the news. The stock was up 8.4% at 11:02 a.m. in New York trading, giving the Boston-based company a market value of $3.9 billion.
Elliott is a New York-based hedge fund run by billionaire Paul Singer. Francisco Partners, with offices in San Francisco, London and New York, specializes in technology investments, according to its website.
Elliott has a history with LogMeIn, which sells video conferencing services and also makes software products workers use to log into their corporate networks. Jesse Cohn, an Elliott partner and its head of U.S. activism, sat on the company’s board for about 16 months starting in January 2017. He joined LogMeIn’s board as part of its merger with Citrix Systems Inc.’s GoTo family of services, which was spun off.
The hedge fund has been in and out of the stock since, briefly holding a 2.4% stake in the company last year.
Francisco and Elliott partnered in 2016 to acquire Quest Software Inc. from Dell Inc. They are now weighing a sale of Quest, which could fetch $3.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said in October.
--With assistance from Liana Baker and Gillian Tan.
To contact the reporters on this story: Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net;Kiel Porter in Chicago at kporter17@bloomberg.net;Scott Deveau in New York at sdeveau2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Liana Baker at lbaker75@bloomberg.net, Matthew Monks
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