Advised SUSE Linux, the leading Enterprise Linux company, on its sale to Novell

We are delighted to announce our first transaction at Arma Partners, only a few months after our formation. On the 4th of November our client, SUSE LINUX AG, was acquired by Novell Inc. for $210m in cash. The deal represents the largest VC-backed M&A exit in the European technology sector for the past two years, and an exceptional return for the investors who have supported SUSE.

The transaction was also a significant one for Novell, which rose 25% in value on announcement of the acquisition. In our view, the deal will have a major impact on the Linux industry as Novell now enters the Linux OS sector, a market currently dominated by Red Hat, and both companies compete against Microsoft for enterprise OS deployments worldwide.