Slashdot Mirror
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 think you meant "un-uninstallable malware".
Also, Mr. McAfee will continue to make the name less valuable with time. But the days of SCAN and CLEAN...those were wonderful days.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
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.
Because they want to give a big fuck you to Johnny boy. There's a reason this is only happening after he attempted to make a company using his name. At a guess they were already planning to spin it off and decided to take a great big shit on his plans at the same time.
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.