Mitel Takes Another Swing at ShoreTel

Unbowed by October’s rejection, Mitel has come back with a new offer for ShoreTel.  This morning the Canadian-based cloud VoIP provider raised its bid to acquire its US-based rival by just under 5% to $8.50/share.

That’s basically the same bid of $8.10 in cash that ShoreTel rejected last month with another $0.40 in stock added in to sweeten the pot.  ShoreTel did not simply turned down Mitel’s offer, but declined to even sit down to talk about it.  So we don’t know what ShoreTel’s price is, but I think if the first bid were within forty cents of it they wouldn’t have cut it off so swiftly.

Consolidation in this space has definitely been heating up.  Last week, another cloud communications merger hit the wires as Vonage agreed to acquire Telesphere for $114M.  Mitel bought Aastra last year, and has a generally stronger presence in Canada and in Europe.  They’d like to build scale in the US, and acquiring ShoreTel would definitely help them do that.

But first they’ve got to convince a reluctant ShoreTel or its shareholders that such an idea would be worth their while.

 

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Categories: Cloud Computing · Mergers and Acquisitions · VoIP