SUSE software unit was acquired by EQT for $2.5 billion
Due to underestimation of the difficulty of receiving Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s software assets, Micro Focus has plunged 50% after its revenue forecast was lowered in March this year.
On Monday, Micro Focus announced that it would sell a significant portion of its business to the Swedish private equity group EQT (EQT), and part of the proceeds will be used to reduce debt, and the rest will be returned to shareholders. EQT is an investment company focused on the development field with extensive experience in the software industry.
It reports that the software provider and IT management company will sell Suse Linux business to EQT for US$2.535 billion, and SUSE said it plans to operate as a completely independent business. The transaction is subject to approval by Micro Focus shareholders and regulators and is expected to complete in early 2019.
Founded in 1992, SUSE is the world’s first enterprise-class open source Linux operating system, vendor. In 1994, they first introduced the SLS/Slackware installation CD, named SuSE Linux 1.0. It was followed by Florian La Roche’s Jurix distribution (also a Slackware-based distribution) and in 1996 launched an utterly self-built distribution – SuSE Linux 4.2. As of today, SUSE has changed hands several times:
- In 2004, SUSE was acquired by Novell;
- In 2010, Attachmate acquired Novell;
- In 2014, Micro Focus acquired the Attachmate Group;
- In 2018, Attachmate sold the SUSE business to EQT.
Source: Channel NewsAsia
