Fortinet swallows Meru for $44m

Rumours of a sale reappeared in January

Meru Networks has been acquired by Fortinet, more than six years after rumours first appeared that the firm was searching for a backer.

The security company grabbed Meru in a deal worth $44m (£28.69m), it announced today.

Back in January, NASDAQ-listed Meru appointed Deutsche Bank as a financial adviser to "explore strategic options" after it axed one in 10 of its staff. Rumours of a sale have been doing the rounds since as early as 2009.

Fortinet said Meru will bring 33 awarded patents and 35 pending patents with it when the deal closes, which is expected to happen in the third quarter of the calendar year.

"Once the transaction closes, Fortinet will include Meru in its guidance going forward and provide additional financial details in its second-quarter 2015 financial results announcement," the vendor said. "Prior to the close, Fortinet and Meru will continue to operate as separate companies."

Meru was founded in 2002 and first arrived on the stock market in 2010. It is based in California, has 300 global staff and in 2014 reported sales of $90.9m.

Fortinet chief executive Ken Xie said: "The acquisition of Meru Networks maps to our overall security vision of combining strong network security with ubiquitous connectivity.

"We expect this to accelerate our innovation through the delivery of new solutions and services to help enterprises of all sizes deploy, manage and secure wired and wireless networks in a mobile era. We believe the extension of our market-leading end-to-end security platform will increase our growth opportunities and benefit our customers and partners globally."