1 Nov 2010
 HID Global announces agreement to acquire ActivIdentity
The pending acquisition targets accelerating requirements for converged access control solutions

HID Global, trusted leader in solutions for the delivery of secure identity, announced that parent company ASSA ABLOY has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ActivIdentity, a global leader in strong authentication and credential management. The acquisition will widen the scope of HID Global's security industry leadership with incremental capabilities focused on the convergence of physical and logical access control.

ActivIdentity provides identity assurance solutions, helping commercial and government organisations to defend against security threats and meet compliance objectives, while eliminating duplicate infrastructure and simplifying the user experience. The addition of ActivIdentity's strong authentication, credential management, security client, and authentication device products and technologies to HID Global's Identity and Access Management business will result in a unique portfolio of converged access solutions for HID Global and ActivIdentity customers.

"ActivIdentity is an excellent strategic fit on several dimensions with HID Global's vision of trusted leadership in solutions for the delivery of secure identity," commented HID Global President and CEO Denis Hébert. "We are excited about the tremendous talent base that will add incremental and complementary capabilities to the HID Global organisation."

"The combination of ActivIdentity with HID Global represents an important industry inflection point of logical access and physical access delivery capabilities," stated Grant Evans Chairman and CEO of ActivIdentity. "The ability to deliver such a comprehensive and innovative solution as this to our customers and partners represents a compelling ROI that has been extremely challenging to recognise in the past."

ActivIdentity is headquartered in Silicon Valley, California with offices in France, UK, Germany, Sweden, Australia and Japan and employs over 200 people. Revenue for the year ending September 2009 was $62.0 million.

The transaction is expected to close in December 2010 subject to regulatory clearances and approval by owners of a majority of the outstanding shares of ActivIdentity.