3 ms·

I think Sophos has just a touch more to it than that. They have a great deal of product and technology and tens of thousands of customers. TB will be interested

• _xander 7y ago
  If that's the case, the challenge will be retaining the key people responsible for Sophos's 'intellectual capital' and sales relationships. It can be extremely costly to keep people after a PE acquisition in cyber - combination of removing the equity incentives (e.g. stock will eventually vest for the top people, if it hasn’t already) plus being in a very hot market where poaching talent is common plus general erosion in conditions to service the debt from the LBO. The cynic in me thinks TB knows cybersecurity will sell at even more ludicrous multiples in the future (and they’re swimming in dry powder), so they won’t need to care too much about the underlying health of the business. The optimist thinks that TB are the masters of this niche and see synergies I don’t. Source: I’ve done DDs in this space and our firm’s (public) stance is to encourage organic growth over doing deals