Rob Bearden (Cloudera)
The private equity backers behind a US$5.3 billion deal to acquire Cloudera want to help accelerate the enterprise data cloud platform vendor’s expansion into new products and markets.
Affiliates of venture capital firms Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) and KKR have struck an agreement to acquire Cloudera in an all-cash transaction, a move that will result in Cloudera becoming a private company by the second half of 2021, when the deal is expected to close.
“We very much look forward to working with Cloudera as it continues to execute its long-term transformation strategy,” said Jeff Hawn, CD&R operating partner, who will serve as chairman of the company upon the close of the transaction.
“The company has made significant progress establishing the Cloudera Data Platform (CDP) as a leader in hybrid and multi-cloud analytics, and we believe that our experience and capabilities can offer valuable support to accelerate expansion into new products and markets.”
According to John Park, KKR partner and head of Americas Technology Private Equity, the firm has followed Cloudera closely for a number of years and is pleased to be supporting its mission of helping companies make better use of their data in an ever-evolving hybrid IT environment.
“We are excited to contribute to Cloudera’s accelerated innovation efforts as a private company,” he said.
Cloudera’s board of directors has unanimously approved the transaction and recommends that shareholders approve the transaction and adopt the merger agreement.
Entities related to Icahn Group, controlled by Carl Icahn, collectively holding approximately 18 per cent of the outstanding shares of Cloudera common stock, have entered into a voting agreement to which they have agreed, among other things, to vote their shares of Cloudera common stock in favour of the transaction.
"This transaction provides substantial and certain value to our shareholders while also accelerating Cloudera’s long-term path to hybrid cloud leadership for analytics that span the complete data lifecycle -- from the edge to AI [artificial intelligence],” said Rob Bearden, Cloudera CEO.
“We believe that as a private company with the expertise and support of experienced investors such as CD&R and KKR, Cloudera will have the resources and flexibility to drive product-led growth and expand our addressable market opportunity,” he said.
Completion of the deal is subject to customary closing conditions, including the approval of Cloudera shareholders and antitrust approval.
In June last year, Cloudera launched its CDP Private Cloud, which was built for hybrid cloud environments and aimed at giving companies the ability to connect their on-premises private clouds to public clouds with consistent, built-in security and governance.
