US Company acquires Massana for $26.5m

Massana, the Dublin-based developer of Gigabit Ethernet-over-copper physical layer device (PHY) technologies has been acquired by US based chip maker, Agere Systems (NYSE: AGR.A).

Agere acquired the Irish company in a stock transaction for approximately 9.1 million shares of Agere Class A common stock, valued at about $26.2m (€37.9m), based on the closing price of $2.88 for the Agere Class A common stock on August 22, 2003.

Most of the shares would however, go to Massana’s existing majority shareholders who put of almost all of the USD35m that Massana has raised to date in venture capital.

According to the company, the acquisition will allow Agere to quickly provide leading PHY solutions for delivery of GbE speeds to enterprises over existing copper networks. Massana’s 45 staff will now join Agere.