Informatica taken private with Microsoft and Salesforce joining in

Informatica closed its deal to go private Thursday and disclosed that Salesforce and Microsoft both bought a stake. It’s part of a trend in which companies have been taking themselves private to make themselves more competitive. What is odd here is that it is unusual just to include two large public and high-profile companies as investors.

Similarly, Mark Jenkins, Senior Managing Director & Global Head of Private Investments, CPPIB, stated, “We look forward to working with management, including Anil as acting CEO, to support the Company in its vision to become a multi-billion dollar leader in the broader data integration space”.

Stockholders get $48.75 in cash per share under the terms of the deal. Informatica chief product officer Anil Chakravarthy is the new acting chief executive.

The strategy under new CEO Chakravarthy will largely remain the same.

Former Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen joins Informatica as board member and special advisor. “Now as a private company…we will have more flexibility and more time to implement our transformative innovation roadmap and to evolve our business model”, Abbasi said.

Abbasi noted that Informatica can now be “measured in years, not quarters”. “And living our customer-first culture, we will evolve our business model to match customers’ preferences for pay-for-use subscription offerings”.

The involvement of Microsoft and Salesforce has both financial and strategic implications, he said.

“Informatica has had a tough go of it among investors despite its overall strength and success”, said Charles King, principal analyst with Pund-IT. The total value of the buyout is said to be around $5.3bn. The company provides enterprise data integration software and services – in several technology categories, including Cloud Integration, Data Integration for Big Data initiatives, and MDM Solutions. Perhaps the biggest such firm to do so was Dell, which agreed to sell itself to founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners in October 2013 for an estimated $24.9bn. Is it possible that Informatica was the source of the “merger rumors” that pointed to a Microsoft-Salesforce.com deal?