IBM to acquire Red Hat for approximately $34 billion
NewsOctober 29, 2018
ARMONK, N.Y. and RALEIGH, N.C. Red Hat and IBM officials entered into a definitive agreement, under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.
IBM and Red Hat will be positioned to accelerate hybrid multi-cloud adoption with this merger, officials say. Together, they plan to help clients create cloud-native business applications faster, drive greater portability and security of data and applications across multiple public and private clouds, all with consistent cloud management.
With this acquisition, IBM will remain committed to Red Hat's open governance, open source contributions, participation in the open source community and development model, and fostering its widespread developer ecosystem, IBM officials say. In addition, IBM and Red Hat will remain committed to the continued freedom of open source, via such efforts as Patent Promise, GPL Cooperation Commitment, the Open Invention Network and the LOT Network.
"The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," says Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.
"Most companies today are only 20 percent along their cloud journey, renting compute power to cut costs," she adds. "The next 80 percent is about unlocking real business value and driving growth. This is the next chapter of the cloud. It requires shifting business applications to hybrid cloud, extracting more data and optimizing every part of the business, from supply chains to sales."
IBM and Red Hat also will continue to build and enhance Red Hat partnerships, including those with major cloud providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Alibaba and more, in addition to the IBM Cloud. At the same time, Red Hat will benefit from IBM's hybrid cloud and enterprise IT scale in helping expand their open source technology portfolio to businesses globally.
Upon closing of the acquisition, Red Hat will join IBM's Hybrid Cloud team as a distinct unit, preserving the independence and neutrality of Red Hat's open source development heritage and commitment, current product portfolio and go-to-market strategy, and unique development culture. Red Hat will continue to be led by Jim Whitehurst and Red Hat's current management team. Jim Whitehurst also will join IBM's senior management team and report to Ginni Rometty. IBM intends to maintain Red Hat's headquarters, facilities, brands and practices.
The acquisition has been approved by the boards of directors of both IBM and Red Hat. It is subject to Red Hat shareholder approval. It also is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in the latter half of 2019.
