Siemens. Image: wallix/Shutterstock
Siemens, one of the world’s largest tech and engineering powerhouses, has its eye on Mentor Graphics as a $4.5bn deal for the semiconductor software designer nears.
Not afraid of ploughing billions of dollars into projects in recent months, Siemens’s latest move – which could happen as early as this week according to Reuters – is the pursuit of Mentor Graphics.
The latter’s sale comes about after shareholders complained of undervaluation, with Siemens’s interest a bid to up its software capabilities.
At the start of the year, Siemens bought CD-adapco – which makes computer programs used by engineers to simulate the inner workings of an engine – for $1bn.
During the summer, Siemens revealed plans to invest $1bn in a new start-up accelerator called Next47 focused on disruptive ideas, such as the electrification of aviation.
With its name playing on the fact that Siemens was founded in 1847, Next47 is headed by Siemens’s chief technology officer Siegfried Russwurm.
Independent from Siemens but with access to the company’s vast resources, it has offices in Berkeley, Shanghai, and Munich, and will cover all regions of the world from these locations.
These moves, part of current chief executive Joe Kaeser’s realignment of the company, have also seen Siemens listing its healthcare business, valued at $15bn.
Though according to Business Insider, Siemens’s move for Mentor Graphics will be part of a more arduous journey for the latter.
A hostile takeover in 2008 was ultimately fought off but, “no stranger to activist investors or takeover offers over the years”, according to the report, billionaire activist Carl Icahn won a proxy fight in 2011 that secured him three board seats at the time.
