Symantec Agrees to Sell Veritas Unit for $8 Billion to Carlyle Group

Symantec Corp, the maker of Norton antivirus software, has agreed to sell its data storage unit, Veritas, for $8 billion to a group led by Carlyle Group LP. The deal is the largest US leveraged buyout of the year and will give Symantec much-needed funds to compete in the cyber security market with major players like Microsoft, Intel, and Kaspersky Labs. The sale is expected to close by the end of the year, after which Veritas will become a privately-held company.

Key Takeaways:

Symantec has agreed to sell its Veritas data storage unit to a group led by Carlyle Group LP for $8 billion.
The sale is the largest US leveraged buyout of the year and will provide Symantec with much-needed funds to compete in the cyber security market.
Veritas will become a privately-held company upon completion of the sale, expected to close by the end of the year.
Symantec will use the proceeds to make inexpensive acquisitions, with potential targets including Proofpoint, Qualis, FortiNet Inc, and private companies.
The sale is a result of Symantec seeking to focus on its core security DNA and to address the challenges of weak PC sales and falling demand for antivirus software.
FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives stated that the Veritas storage unit has been a "massive black cloud" on the Symantec story for a decade.

Statistics:

$8 billion: the sale price of the Veritas data storage unit.
$7 billion to $8 billion: the reported range of the sale price in Bloomberg's earlier report.
6%: the maximum decline in shares of Symantec after the sale announcement.
10 years: the amount of time the Veritas unit has been a burden on Symantec's operations, according to Daniel Ives.

Sources:

"Symantec in talks to sell Veritas data-storage business to Carlyle for $7 bn - $8 bn" by Domain-b.com, distributed by Contify.com (Copyright 2010).
Reuters, quoted in the article, reporting on FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives's comments.