Cisco gets green light to wrap Tandberg acquisition

Cisco may be celebrating Christmas early this year as it has just received the necessary 89.1 percent shareholder approval it needs to finish its $3.4 billion acquisition of video networking supplier Tandberg. A number of industry reports predicted that Cisco probably would not have have gotten approval for the deal until early 2010.

As reported in FierceTelecom's sister publication FierceVoIP [1], Cisco needed to get 90 percent shareholder approval for the deal to be completed, but with the 2 percent share it already owns in Tandberg, Cisco now has surpassed the required amount.

This latest development ends a two-month saga that began in October when it initially made a $3 billion bid to purchase the Norwegian video equipment company, which was rejected by Tandberg's shareholders who said the bid was not high enough. And after threatening to scrap the deal altogether, Cisco decided it was worth it to raise the bid to $3.4 billion to acquire Tandberg as part of company CEO John Chamber's goal of expanding its video expertise.

For more:
- see the FierceVoIP article [1]
- read this article [2]

Follow the whole Tandberg/Cisco saga here:
Cisco to finalize Tandberg purchase by Christmas? [3]
Cisco ups the ante on TANDBERG to $3.4B [4]
Cisco-TANDBERG deal only has 9.37% shareholder acceptance [5]
Scare tactic or serious? Cisco may drop TANDBERG bid [6]
Cisco's TANDBERG purchase rejected by shareholders [7]
How will the Cisco/Tandberg purchase affect Polycom? [8]
Cisco buys TANDBERG for $3B [9]