Huawei buys out Symantec

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Huawei Technologies, the world’s No.2 telecoms equipment maker, plans to buy the
remaining 49 percent stake in a joint venture with Symantec Corp that it does
not already own for $530 million to bolster its corporate security solutions
business.

The deal allows Huawei to boost its product portfolio for its enterprise
customers and helps Symantec improve its bottomline by dropping the loss-making
business, even as the value of the deal fell below market expectations.

The deal is subject to approval from regulators in the United States, but
analysts and company executives foresee few hurdles because the joint venture,
called Huawei Symantec, was set up in Hong Kong and Huawei already owns the
majority stake.

“Whether this deal will complete or not…it is still a question mark for
now, but I feel that they have a better chance since this joint venture is
established in Hong Kong, outside of mainland China,” said Cathy Huang, an
analyst at Frost & Sullivan in Singapore.

Huawei expects the deal, which some analysts estimated could have been worth
about $1 billion, to close in the first quarter of 2012.

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