According to statements from both vendors, Actian has agreed to purchase all of Pervasive’s outstanding shares for $9.20 a piece, with a total price tag of $161.9 million.
Pervasive CEO and President John Farr said in a brief statement on his company’s website that a merger with Actian held the best value for its shareholders, employees and customers based on an “assessment of our strategic alternatives” as well as the complementary portfolios and “track record of innovation.”
In August, Actian put in an unsolicited bid of $154 million, or $8.50 per share, for Pervasive following what Actian CEO Steve Shine called at the time “repeated efforts” to engage in merger negotiations. Pervasive offered little comment over the subsequent months, but stated they would seek the “appropriate course” for its stockholders. In November, Actian bumped up the stock buyout price to $9 per share.
In a statement on the proposed deal for Pervasive late Monday, Actian’s Shine said the merger gives both vendors the opportunity to take on “industry giants” as the industry attempts to tap into the enterprise interest and hype on large and unstructured data sets.
The merger agreement is subject to closing conditions, including approval by Pervasive’s stockholders. Pervasive stated it anticipated the deal to close by the end of the second quarter of this year.
Pervasive was founded in 1994 and is based in Austin, Texas. In the last year, Pervasive has made the shift to providing more of its integration, analytics and database management offerings in the cloud.
Actian, formerly Ingres, is based in Redwood City, Calif., and counts more than 10,000 customers, including airline Lufthansa, the University of Oxford and eBay. Actian’s strategy of late has focused on big data solutions, cloud processing and decision management. Actian’s Vectorwise analytic platform has been central to that effort, and in releases on the proposed merger, was pointed to as a tool to boost Pervasive’s existing advanced analytics software.
Justin Kern is senior editor at Information Management and can be reached at justin.kern@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @IMJustinKern.
