Marlin Equity Partners acquires Sycamore Networks for $18.75 million in cash

Sycamore Networks, an optical vendor that saw prominence during the late 1990s dotcom boom, has started a new life as Marlin Equity Partners on Friday completed its $18.75 million acquisition of the company's Intelligent Bandwidth Management business.

Last September, Marlin Equity Partners announced it would acquire the Intelligent Bandwidth Management unit for $18.75 million in cash for the assets and assume "certain related liabilities."

John Scully, who most recently served as Sycamore's vice president of worldwide sales and support, will lead the new company as its president and CEO.

Scully said in a statement, "we look forward to strengthening our relationships with current and prospective customers as we expand the features and capabilities of our solutions portfolio."

Times have been hard for Sycamore in recent years. Following the economic downturn in 2008, the vendor's revenue dropped to $67.3 million from $115 million in fiscal year 2007. In fiscal year 2012, the company reported $57.2 million in revenue with a net loss of $12.9 million.

A potential area of growth could be a combination of Sycamore with Marlin Equity Partners' pending acquisition of Nokia Siemens Networks' (NSN) optical unit. In December, Marlin reached a deal to acquire the Finland-based company's unit as an independent company in the evolving optical market segment.

Like NSN's sale of its access network division to ADTRAN (Nasdaq: ADTN) in December 2011, NSN is divesting its optical unit as part of its move to increase its mobile broadband focus.

Scott Larson, Sycamore Networks Solutions' VP of corporate marketing, said in a Lightwave article that he could not comment on any possible integration of the two units since the NSN deal with Marlin Equity Partners has not been completed.

Sycamore's management is also continuing the liquidation of its remaining assets, but has not disclosed the timing of the dissolution.

For more:
- see the release
- Lightwave has this article
- The Wall Street Journal has this article (sub. req.)

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