HID Global (Assa Abloy) to acquire LaserCard
The offered price amounts to approximately US$ 80 million (EUR 62 million) with an offered share price of US$ 6.25 (EUR 4.83) per share, net to the seller in cash without interest, representing, says Assa Abloy, a premium of approximately 42% over LaserCard's average closing share price during the past 20 trading days ended December 17, 2010. Under the terms of the merger agreement, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Assa Abloy will commence a tender offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of LaserCard common stock. The offer is expected to commence on December 22, 2010 and will expire at the end of the day on Friday, January 21, 2011. The transaction is expected to be completed during Q1/2011.
LaserCard's unique portfolio of card products, services, and solutions for complex ID management are used by 400 customers in 44 nations. The company's strength is in its propriety knowhow and highly differentiated optical technology-based credentials used for citizen identification, border security, government service delivery, and facility access applications.
LaserCard is based in California and also has offices in Rastede and Ratingen in Germany, employs 182 people and had a turnover of US$ 59 million (EUR 45.5 million) for 2009.
The acquisition, together with HID, Fargo and recently acquired ActivIdentity, is expected to create a comprehensive set of secure credentialing capabilities for government issued ID programs and a unique platform of technology and knowhow for future development of eGovernment solutions. LaserCard is recognized for secure identity credentials for large scale citizen and immigrant identification programs with capabilities ranging from secure card design to issuance system implementation. The company’s unique credential constructions feature LaserCard’s highly differentiated, counterfeit resistant optical security media (OSM) and embedded hologram technology that enables documentation authentication with the human eye. The acquisition includes LaserCard’s wholly-owned German subsidiary, Challenge Card Design Plastikkarten (CCD), manufacturer of specialty cards and provider of card personalization and ID management solutions. Headquartered in Irvine, California, HID Global has over 1,700 employees worldwide and operates international offices that support more than 100 countries.
Assa Abloy employs 37,000 people worldwide, the company 2009 turnover amounted to approximately SEK 35 billion (EUR 3.9 billion) and the operating profit amounted to approximately SEK 5.4 billion (EUR 607 million).
In related news, HID Global announced it has completed the acquisition of ActivIdentity (cf. Smart Insights Weekly #10-43). The acquisition will expand HID Global’s logical access offering and create a unique portfolio of converged physical and logical access solutions. HID says these solutions will enable existing and future enterprise, financial services and government customers to meet their security and compliance requirements with the industry’s broadest range of user authentication products. ActivIdentity’s solutions are used to confidently establish a person’s identity for digital interactions, also known as logical access control.
As part of HID’s Global Identity and Access Management business, ActivIdentity will extend HID’s logical access control offering to include identity assurance products that help commercial and government organizations defend against security threats and meet compliance requirements while streamlining their infrastructure and simplifying the user experience.