A similar article by Jessica Lyons Hardcastle Janu
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Posted On: 01/25/2019 11:00:33 PM
A similar article by Jessica Lyons Hardcastle January 25, 2019, 11:27 am MT, SDXCentral.com (sorry, I don’t subscribe to The Business Journals)
McAfee Cuts 200 Employees as Buyout Rumors Persist
McAfee has laid off 200 employees, or about 4 percent of its workforce, amid rumors that private equity firm Thoma Bravo wants to buy the security company.
First reported by The Information, the job cuts hit departments across the company, including sales, engineering, finance, and human resources. Several senior sales executives, including Bill McAlister, senior vice president of sales for the Americas, have also left.
The most recent layoffs follow a smaller round of job cuts over the summer as well as layoffs in 2017. The company also eliminated hundreds more open positions.
“It’s brutal over there,” one person with knowledge of the cuts told The Information.
McAfee did not immediately respond to SDxCentral’s request for comment.
Buyout Rumors
The layoffs come amid rumors that Thoma Bravo is looking to buy McAfee. The private equity firm is willing to spend a “significant premium” over McAfee’s 2016 $4.2 billion valuation, CNBC reports.
Thoma Bravo spent billions scooping up security companies in 2018. It acquired Barracuda Networks for $1.6 billion, Veracode from Broadcom for $950 million, and Centrify for a reported $400 million.
Thoma Bravo also approached Symantec in November about acquiring that security software company. A deal with McAfee, however, would likely rule out a Symantec purchase.
Both McAfee and Symantec have lost market share to newer security vendors like Cylance (recently purchased by BlackBerry for $1.4 billion), CrowdStrike, and Carbon Black in recent years. Symantec also recently cut about 900 employees, or 8 percent of its global workforce, amid declining enterprise sales.
The job cuts and the buyout rumors are yet another sign that both of the older security vendors are struggling to shed their reputations as a legacy firewall vendors and boost their cloud-security clout with enterprise customers.
McAfee Cuts 200 Employees as Buyout Rumors Persist
McAfee has laid off 200 employees, or about 4 percent of its workforce, amid rumors that private equity firm Thoma Bravo wants to buy the security company.
First reported by The Information, the job cuts hit departments across the company, including sales, engineering, finance, and human resources. Several senior sales executives, including Bill McAlister, senior vice president of sales for the Americas, have also left.
The most recent layoffs follow a smaller round of job cuts over the summer as well as layoffs in 2017. The company also eliminated hundreds more open positions.
“It’s brutal over there,” one person with knowledge of the cuts told The Information.
McAfee did not immediately respond to SDxCentral’s request for comment.
Buyout Rumors
The layoffs come amid rumors that Thoma Bravo is looking to buy McAfee. The private equity firm is willing to spend a “significant premium” over McAfee’s 2016 $4.2 billion valuation, CNBC reports.
Thoma Bravo spent billions scooping up security companies in 2018. It acquired Barracuda Networks for $1.6 billion, Veracode from Broadcom for $950 million, and Centrify for a reported $400 million.
Thoma Bravo also approached Symantec in November about acquiring that security software company. A deal with McAfee, however, would likely rule out a Symantec purchase.
Both McAfee and Symantec have lost market share to newer security vendors like Cylance (recently purchased by BlackBerry for $1.4 billion), CrowdStrike, and Carbon Black in recent years. Symantec also recently cut about 900 employees, or 8 percent of its global workforce, amid declining enterprise sales.
The job cuts and the buyout rumors are yet another sign that both of the older security vendors are struggling to shed their reputations as a legacy firewall vendors and boost their cloud-security clout with enterprise customers.
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