Newbury company announces Hewlett Packard deal

Micro Focus International announces £6.6bn deal

A Newbury-based software company has unveiled a multi-million pound deal with a computing giant.

Micro Focus International has announced that it intends to buy a stake of Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Software Business Segement.

The transaction is valued at approximately £6.2bn ($8.8bn).

The independent company, which has its office in Old Bath Road, Newbury, has a market value of about £4.45bn.

Micro Focus and Hewlett Packard have announced their intent to enter into a commercial partnership naming SUSE as HPE’s preferred Linux partner

Micro Focus executive chairman, Kevin Loosemore, said: "Today’s announcement marks yet another significant milestone for Micro Focus and is wholly consistent with the long-term business strategy we have been pursuing to be the most disciplined global provider of infrastructure software.

"The proposed merger with HPE Software is consistent with our recent acquisitions of Serena Software and the Attachmate Group.”

“The combination of Micro Focus with HPE Software will give customers more choice as they seek to maximize the value of existing IT assets, leveraging their business logic and data along with next-generation technologies to innovate in new ways with the lowest possible risk.”

The announcement is the latest in a string of acquisitions that has catapulted Micro Focus into the FTSE-100 index.

Its shares have risen by 60 per cent over the last year and it replaced software company ARM on the index last week.

See next week's Newbury Weekly News for more.