SingTel has signed an agreement to acquire 98% of Trustwave’s equity for approximately $810 million.
Headquartered in Chicago, USA, Trustwave offers threat protection, vulnerabilitymanagement and compliance management services, and has over three million enterprise subscribers. It has a presence in 26 countries across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, with a global workforce of approximately 1,200 security professionals – forensic and security research professionals – through its SpiderLabs unit. It operates five security and nine engineering centres.
Trustwave’s Chairman and CEO, Robert J. McCullen, will retain the remaining 2% of the company’s shares.
According to Singtel, Trustwave will continue to operate independently as a separate business unit after the acquisition is completed.
The estimated $810 million deal excludes net debt and is subject to necessary regulatory and other third-party approvals, Singtel said. The transaction is expected to be EBITDA positive from the second year of the acquisition and its earnings will be included in Singtel's earnings from the third year.
The acquisition is expected to be completed within three to six months.
In October last year, Singtel signed a five-year agreement with FireEye to set up cybersecurity monitoring facilities in Singapore and Sydney, as well as provide cloud data services for businesses that want to store their data locally. The $50 million deal will fund the infrastructure and manpower for two Advanced Security Operation Centres (ASOCs).
In the same month, the Singapore Telco also signed a partnership with Microsoft to provide a Cloud Operating System Network, which allows Asia-Pacific businesses to move data and workloads between various cloud environments, including public, private, and SingTel's own virtual private cloud.
