Symantec To Acquire Clearwell Systems

Symantec Corp. has announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Clearwell Systems, Inc., the eDiscovery company. The acquisition of Clearwell will bring together eDiscovery, archiving and backup offerings to provide customers comprehensive information management solutions. Under the terms of the agreement, Symantec will acquire Clearwell for a purchase price of approximately $390 million, net of Clearwell’s existing cash balance of approximately $20 million. The agreement is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, and is expected to close in the September quarter.

“As information continues to grow at unprecedented rates, the biggest challenge for customers is to protect, manage and backup this information as well as have the ability to categorise and discover it efficiently,” said Deepak Mohan, senior vice president, Information Management Group, Symantec. “The acquisition of Clearwell’s market leading electronic discovery solution will further increase Symantec’s ability to get the right information, to the right people, at the right time, while reducing overall legal review costs and limiting risk.”

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Clearwell’s eDiscovery solution complements and enhances Symantec’s Enterprise Vault eDiscovery capabilities to create a more complete end-to-end eDiscovery solution. The existing integration of Enterprise Vault with the Clearwell eDiscovery Platform positions Symantec to quickly help IT and legal users streamline and reduce the cost, time and risk of eDiscovery across the most relevant information sources including email, desktops, file servers, backups and the cloud.

“Archiving and eDiscovery are two critical elements of information governance,” said Aaref Hilaly, president and chief executive officer, Clearwell Systems. “By joining forces and combining the industry’s leading archiving solution with the industry’s leading eDiscovery solution, we will be uniquely positioned to deliver a seamless, integrated information governance workflow, benefitting both Symantec and Clearwell customers.”

Symantec expects this transaction to be one-and-a-half cents dilutive to non-GAAP earnings per share in fiscal year 2012. The transaction is expected to be accretive starting in fiscal year 2013. Upon close of the acquisition, Clearwell will join the Information Management Group led by Senior Vice President Deepak Mohan.