Bulletins

Private equity firms Vista and Evergreen are buying Citrix for $16.5 billion

SaaS continues to be a hot target for private equity investment.

citrix booth at a conference

Citrix will be combined with Tibco as part of a $16.5 billion all-cash transaction.

Photo: Citrix

Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital, a division of Elliott Investment Management, are buying Citrix Systems for $16.5 billion, an all-cash deal that's just the latest example of private equity investment in enterprise SaaS companies.

The acquisition is a strategic move to consolidate Citrix and Tibco, an intelligence software business Vista purchased in 2014 for north of $4 billion.The combined company will have 400,000 customers, most of which are in the Fortune 500, and it plans to sell a combination of analytics, virtualization and cloud computing tools to power hybrid work.

Vista and Elliott had existing relationships with Citrix before the acquisition. Evergreen was already an investor, and Citrix purchased a project management company from Vista for $2.25 billion last year, according to TechCrunch.

The acquisition comes as PE firms sit on treasure troves of cash without enough buying targets, which has sparked a great deal of interest in enterprise SaaS companies over the last two years. Taking public tech companies private and then restructuring them is one way for PE firms to squeeze value out of a slowing market.

Aisha Counts

Aisha Counts (@aishacounts) is a reporter at Protocol covering enterprise software. Formerly, she was a management consultant for EY. She's based in Los Angeles and can be reached at acounts@protocol.com.

vista equity partnerscitrixelliott investment management
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