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Intel Selling Majority Stake In Intel Security, 'New' Company To Be Called McAfee (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Intel is spinning out its security business with help from private equity firm TPG, as the chip giant focuses more on its top growth opportunities. Intel will collect $3.1 billion in cash and retain a 49% ownership stake. TPG will own 51% of the new company, to be called McAfee. Under terms of the spin off, TPG will make a $1.1 billion equity investment in McAfee, which will also take on $2 billion of debt. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017, Intel said. The deal ends Intel's sometimes tumultuous efforts to add cybersecurity software features to its various semiconductor chip businesses. It also marks a near-final coda to Intel's $8 billion purchase of McAfee in 2010. Analysts and investors have favored disposing of the business, which they said didn't add much to the chip sales and was too dependent on the shrinking PC market. The unit reported $1.1 billion of revenue in the first half of the year, up 11% from the same period of 2015, and operating income of $182 million, a 391% jump. Chris Young, who joined Intel's security unit from Cisco Systems in 2014, will be CEO of the new company. Intel said it still plans to collaborate with McAfee to add security features across its product lines.
I can only assume that "Crazy Loon Industries" was already taken?
Seriously Intel? The name McAfee is synonymous with "uninstallable malware" with consumers. Why would you want to ride those coattails?
Thinking the security future is PC-based is short-sighted at best. Security in the future is going to be about hand-held devices, moving data (between devices, cloud, etc.), and the small, connected devices we like to call the Internet-of-Things.
These markets will make the PC security market looks small.
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Pretty sure this is just a thumb in the eye for John McAfee suing Intel to get commercial use of his name back.
I guess that John McAfee lawsuit is useless now.
... or, at least it's only part of what the new McAfee will be offering.
They're also planning to launch a new line of hallucinogenic rectal bath salts.
#DeleteChrome
Well so much for John getting his name back!
I'm kind of bummed about this, I had a small hope that Intel could turn this product around but spinning it back out will kind of kills that dream. It's not that I have any love for it, but I have customers that use it so I'm stuck dealing with it in my job.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Making a point to revive what was arguably one of the worst "security" systems ever foisted upon the computing public... priceless. (D'oh!)
I'm not really a big fan, but I think John McAfee should be allowed to use his own name in his own business, he may have sold his business, but I am pretty sure he didn't sell up his rights on his own name.
The way McAfee AV runs now and installs itself on unsuspecting users makes it no better than what it is meant to be protecting against. Perhaps if they focused some of their R&D on securing hand helds instead of how to install without the users knowledge they may do better.
Hello,
Intel had been investigating selling Intel Security (nee McAfee) for well over a year, so this is hardly a recent development on their part. And regardless of what the Slashdot crowd things of the products' quality, they do have massive amounts of brand recognition in both the consumer and enterprise spaces.
Mr. McAfee had given up the rights to his name when preparing McAfee Associates' IPO and did quite well in terms of how he was compensated. Even back in 1995 he was already trying to get his name back from Bill Larson (then President, CEO and Chairman of McAfee Associates) and having no luck. As much as Bill hated the McAfee name, he realized there was so much money to be made in it, and took the company from $20-30M in revenue to billions of dollars in valuation .
Mr. McAfee's one of the smartest business people I know, and his ability to rapidly absorb data, synthesize it and come up with all sorts of ideas for products is pretty darn amazing, and frankly, with all of the time and effort he's put into being in front of the media, trying to get his name back at this point is a waste of time and shareholder's money spent on lawyers: Due to his recent high-profile activities, there's enough interest in Mr. McAfee that he doesn't need to capitalize on his name, anymore. He could name a company "Spicy Lemon" and still generate media attention because of his involvement with it, just as he's done with all the products he's taken on since returning to the U.S. after fleeing Belize.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Dexter is a good dog.
He got paid quite well for the McAfee name, and now he wants to sell anti-spyware software under that name.
2Billion in debt, wow
McRipoff has been over priced and sold to fail over and over as the numbers never meet expectations 3 or 4 time now. At some point people will learn, but then again P. T. Barnum had it right a long time ago. Crappy invasive software that slows your machine to a crawl in the name of protection that it will get right about 80% of the time.