BlackBerry Maker Acquires Certicom For $106 Million
Certicom’s holdout for better terms from Research In Motion (NSDQ: RIMM)’s initial $53 million hostile acquisition bid has paid off. The maker of BlackBerry devices on Tuesday agreed to pay $106.5 million for Certicom, more than double its original offer made in December.
The acquisition, announced by Certicom, was preceded by an announcement from VeriSign, which said that it would not match the Research In Motion offer.
In a statement, Certicom executives said it “will be in a position to enter into an arrangement agreement with RIM as contemplated by the RIM offer after Certicom has made payment of a $4 million (in Canadian dollars) termination fee to VeriSign and terminated the VeriSign agreement.”
Cryptography specialist Certicom provides its Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), which it maintains delivers the most security per bit “of any known public-key scheme.” Its security solutions have been adopted by the U.S. National Security Agency for government communications. More…
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