CA Technologies announced an agreement to acquire privately held authentication and fraud-prevention company Arcot Systems on August 30, 2010, in an all-cash transaction valued at $200 million. CA’s SEC filing records the acquisition as completed on October 4, 2010; the company announced the completion publicly the next day.
What CA announced
CA said it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Arcot, which it described as providing advanced authentication and fraud-prevention solutions to enterprises and financial-services providers. The offering included both on-premises software and cloud services. The transaction was valued at $200 million, payable in cash, according to CA’s August 30, 2010 announcement.
At the time, CA said the acquisition would expand its Identity and Access Management portfolio and support its cloud-security strategy. Those were CA’s stated business reasons for the deal, not an independent assessment of Arcot’s technology or market position.
Agreement, completion and public announcement dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| August 30, 2010 | CA announced it had signed the definitive agreement to acquire Arcot for $200 million in cash. |
| October 4, 2010 | CA’s quarterly SEC filing records completion of its acquisition of 100% of Arcot’s voting equity interests. |
| October 5, 2010 | CA publicly announced that the acquisition had been completed for $200 million in cash. |
| February 16, 2011 | CA described Arcot-derived products and their integration into its authentication offerings. |
The dates distinguish the signing announcement from the legal completion date and CA’s public completion release. The completion date is recorded in CA’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2010; the public announcement appeared in CA’s October 5 release.
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What Arcot brought to CA
In its 2011 announcement, CA tied Arcot-derived technology to CA SiteMinder and identified several offerings: CA Arcot WebFort and RiskFort as on-premises solutions, ArcotID as a software credential, and CA Advanced Authentication Cloud Service, formerly known as Arcot A-OK for Enterprise. CA also described updates to authentication services and mobile authentication features. These names document the products CA described at that time; they do not establish present-day branding, ownership, or availability.
CA’s February 16, 2011 announcement discussed the service integration. CA’s fiscal 2011 Form 10-K also characterized Arcot as serving enterprise users and financial-services providers and said the deal enhanced CA’s identity and access-management offerings: CA, Inc. fiscal 2011 Form 10-K.
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What CA said about Arcot’s scale
CA’s 2010 deal announcement said Arcot solutions helped prevent fraud for about one million online credit-card transactions each day. In February 2011, CA said the technology driving its cloud-security service verified 150 million identities and helped prevent fraud for approximately one million online credit and debit transactions daily. These are historical figures published by CA, not independently verified measurements or claims about current service volumes.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the acquisition meant for consumers
This was an enterprise-software and cloud-services acquisition, not the launch of a consumer financial product. CA’s 2011 release mentioned customers exchanging hardware tokens for a software credential, but that does not show that Arcot sold those tokens or that a token was necessary to use the products. The available transaction and product descriptions support no consumer purchase recommendation.
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CA general manager Dave Hansen summarized the company’s rationale this way: “Controlling identities and their access to information is a critical area of security.”
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- BUILT TO LAST: Made from tough, waterproof, and crush-resistant materials. Manufactured in Sweden and programmed in the USA with the highest security standards.
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