Hibernia Adds Betfair, Hires Perone as COO, Looks at M&A

Hibernia Atlantic added a new Chief Operations Officer and picked up a transatlantic deal as well.  Kathy Perone will take the helm as COO at a time when Hibernia is busy on multiple fronts, building the first new transatlantic cable in some time, aggressively targeting the financial sector, and apparently looking at M&A possibilities.  Perone is an industry veteran, having most recently led XLNT Technologies, and in the past has led Level 3’s North American division, Focal Communications, and Westcom.

Hibernia also won a 10G wavelength contract with the online gaming company Betfair, which will be hooking up the company’s London and Dublin offices, a route enabled by that Irish fiber extension they built out a year or two ago. [Edit] Hibernia also just announced that it has hooked up to Interxion’s new DUB2 facility, bringing with it direct connectivity between Dublin and North America.

Meanwhile, I’m curious at the mention of M&A interest on the part of Hibernia.  The company has maintained a very tight focus on bringing out the value of its transatlantic cable, but they may now be ready to add some complementary assets on either side of the Atlantic.  Whether those would be fiber or datacenter assets or simply new product capabilities, I’m not yet sure.  The company’s private equity backers are no strangers to fiber assets, and perhaps they might be taking a look at a deal with ABRY and Sidera.  That was just a thought, no actual rumor there that I know of.  The idea would be to join together each company’s potential in the financial vertical.

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Categories: Undersea cables