Siris Capital Group Buys Polycom $2 Billion in Cash

Polycom, Inc. PLCM revealed Friday that private equity firm, Siris Capital Group, LLC and its affiliates, have submitted a unilaterally binding offer to buy all outstanding shares for $12.50 per share in cash. The company indicated that the all-cash transaction was valued at about $2.0 billion. That included outstanding debt. The current offer represented a premium of 13.6 percent to the existing value of Mitel's offer, based on Mitel's closing share price as of July 7.

However, Siris Capital said the offer was subject to Polycom cancelling its current merger deal with Mitel Networks Corporation MITL in line with the terms and conditions thereof. For its part, Polycom told Siris that its Board unanimously favored Siris' offer to constitute a "Company Superior Proposal" under the terms of its merger agreement with Mitel. Polycom also indicated its intention to cancel promptly its merger agreement with Mitel.

Siris Executive Partner, Dan Moloney, commented, "Polycom has a 25-year history serving the audio and video collaboration needs of the most demanding enterprises and is a globally recognized brand synonymous with innovation and the highest quality. We are very excited for the opportunity to partner with Polycom and its leadership team, as the Company fits well with Siris' investment focus on mission-critical telecommunications businesses."

He continued, "The industry is transitioning to a hybrid on-premise and cloud-based Unified Communications environment. We believe that as an independent private company, Polycom would be best positioned to continue its heritage as a best-in-class communications solutions provider to more than 400,000 companies and institutions, channel partners, and the evolving Unified Communications ecosystem."

Siris' said its offer would remain in force until July 15, 2016. It has already secured committed financing comprising equity and debt. Equity financing would be provided by Siris and its co-investors from available capital commitments whereas the debt financing would be provided by Macquarie Capital.

In the pre-market trading, PLCM traded 13.6 percent higher.