Third Time Lucky for Actian's Pervasive Takeover

California-based big data management firm Actian has agreed to acquire data innovation specialist Pervasive Software for $161.9m, after having two of its previous bids rejected.

Actian first announced its interest in Pervasive last August, when it made a $154m ($8.50 per share) cash bid for the company, while complaining that Pervasive had declined its 'repeated efforts' to engage in negotiations.

After five months of talks, including one more rejected offer of $9.00 per share in November, Actian has now raised its offer by about 8% from the original bid, agreeing to give stockholders $9.20 per share, in cash.

Actian, which also has offices in New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Melbourne, offers a range of data management solutions to enable execs to extract business intelligence from their organizations' big data. The company says the acquisition of Pervasive would represent an 'excellent strategic fit', which would expand its reach and scale, adding software which manages, integrates and analyzes data in the cloud or on-premises.

Steve Shine, Actian's CEO, comments: 'We want to give customers the tools to get to the data, find those nuggets of insight and act on it immediately. The Actian and Pervasive merger allows us to bring this and countless other data driven benefits to the market in a way that enables every business to create compelling business outcomes from the promise of big data.'

Pervasive CEO John Farr says the two companies' complementary product portfolios, track record of technological innovation and customer bases provide a platform of 'compelling synergies'.

Headquartered in Texas, Pervasive is online at www.pervasive.com , while its new owner is at www.actian.com .