The Japanese network giant NTT Communications and the European-based private equity group AXA announced a potential deal this morning that would see NTT take a 90+% stake in Arkadin. The French-based Arkadin serves some 37K customers across Europe, the US, and Asia with audio, video, and web conferencing and related collaboration tools.
Taking a controlling stake in Arkadin will not only boost their collaboration portfolio generally, but also bring a wider geographic range of customers into the orbit of their Arcstar division. NTT has been steadily building its position serving multinationals around the world, and lately has been especially aggressive in expanding its European presence. They’ve also been working steadily on their global cloud infrastructure, both via organic and inorganic means. Following up by adding further corporate-focused assets and customers is a logical extension of that strategy.
Arkadin is said to have been growing rapidly since AXA invested in them last year, and had revenues of somewhere near €185M last year. Last November they bought the videoconferencing specialist Novasight. Further financial terms of today’s proposed transaction were not disclosed, but Arkadin’s current management is reinvesting alongside NTT.
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Categories: ILECs, PTTs · Mergers and Acquisitions · Unified Communications · Video
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