Shareholders block Vector take-private

Vector Capital and BroadVision have walked away from a proposed $29m transaction that would have taken BroadVision off the public market.

San Francisco-based Vector Capital has abandoned its agreement to buy publicly held software company BroadVision for $29 million (€24.7 million). The two sides had announced a deal in July of this year, but BroadVision was unable to pull together a quorum of shareholder votes necessary to complete the transaction.

The acquisition valued BroadVision’s stock at $0.84 per share, representing a 36 percent discount to the stock in the trading session prior to the deal’s announcement. The company’s president and CEO Dr. Pehong Chen, in July, said the deal was “the best opportunity for the stockholders of BroadVision to maximize the value of their holdings”.

Vector, according to the statement, was joined by one other private equity group in bidding for the company.

Because the deal failed to go through, BroadVision now has to reimburse Vector $980,000 in deal-related expenses, and Chen has repurchased the outstanding senior subordinated convertible notes of BroadVision, worth $15.4 million, which the company had agreed to retire as part of the deal.

In a statement, the company said that the proxies it had received through November 11 “were overwhelmingly in favor of the merger, but insufficient to constitute a quorum”.

BroadVision had hoped to follow a path of its rival Blue Martini, which was sold to Golden Gate Capital in a reported $54 million public-to-private deal earlier this year.

Vector Capital is a tech-focused buyout shop. The firm has previously made investments in such businesses as LANDesk Software, Savi Technology and Corel Corp. Most recently, the firm acquired Register.com in a taking-private deal, investing out of its recently closed, $350 million fund, Vector Capital III.