Vector Goes After Corel
The San Francisco PE firm bid $3.50 per share for the Canadian software company.
October 29, 2009
San Francisco-based buyout firm Vector Capital launched a all-cash tender offer to acquire Corel Corp., a packaged software company based in Ottawa.
Vector’s offer to acquire Corel in a take-private transaction for $3.50 per share is set to expire on Nov. 25. The transaction is led by Vector Capital partner Amish Mehta. Mehta joined Corel's board of directors in January 2006 and was interim president and chief executive from November 2003 to June 2005.
Vector Capital used Davis Polk & Wardwell and Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt as its legal counsel for the transaction.
In September, Tom Berquist was named chief financial officer of Corel, heading the software maker’s operations in the Americas, EMEA, Asia-Pacific and Japan. Berquist, the former CFO of Redwood City, Calif.-based software company Ingres and a former managing director of equity research for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Piper Jaffray, replaced Doug McCollam as Corel’s CFO. McCollam announced that he was leaving the company in July.
Corel named Kris Hagerman as CEO in July. Hagerman had served as interim CEO since May 2008. Joe Roberts, who was Corel’s interim executive vice president of products, also joined permanently in July.
In August, Vector purchased BorderWare Technologies as an add-on acquisition to its platform company WatchGuard Technologies. Vector Capital originally acquired WatchGuard in 2006.
Calls placed to Vector were not returned by press time.
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