IBM Takeover U.S. Software Company – Red Hat for $34bln.

International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) reported on Sunday, October 28, 2018, that it acquired Red Hat Inc., the U.S. software company, for $34 billion (฿1.12 billion), including Red Hat’s debt, as IBM is seeking to diversify its technology hardware and consulting business into higher-margin products and services. IBM will pay $190/share in cash for 63% premium of Red Hat shares.

This acquisition is to expand IBM’s subscription-based software offerings as it faces slowing software sales and waning demand for mainframe servers.

According to IBM, Red Hat’s CEO Jim Whitehurst would continue to lead the company, including the current team, while maintaining Red Hat’s headquarters, facilities, brands, and practices.

 

Red Hat, Inc. is an American multinational software company providing open-source software products to the enterprise community. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.

Red Hat has become associated to a large extent with its enterprise operating system Red Hat Enterprise Linux and with the acquisition of open-source enterprise middleware vendor JBoss. Red Hat also offers Red Hat Virtualization (RHV), an enterprise virtualization product. Red Hat provides storage, operating system platforms, middleware, applications, management products, and support, training, and consulting services.

Red Hat creates, maintains, and contributes to many free software projects. It has acquired several proprietary software product codebases through corporate mergers and acquisitions and has released such software under open source licenses. As of March 2016, Red Hat is the second largest corporate contributor to the Linux kernel version 4.14 after Intel.