Activist investor Jana Partners will reportedly not be involved in planned discussions around a deal that would take the cybersecurity vendor private.
Discussions around a sale of publicly traded Rapid7 appear to be moving forward, although without the involvement of an activist investor that had been exerting pressure on the company, according to a report.
Citing a regulatory filing, Reuters reported Wednesday that activist investment firm Jana Partners will not be involved in planned discussions around a deal that would take the cybersecurity vendor private.
[Related: 5 Major Security Vendors That Could Be Acquired By Private Equity]
Instead, investment firm Cannae, which had previously been working with Jana around a potential acquisition of Rapid7, expects to schedule talks with the security vendor on its own, the filing reportedly said.
CRN has reached out to Rapid7, Cannae and Jana Partners for comment.
Rapid7’s stock price was up 6.7 percent to $41.65 a share as of mid-afternoon Wednesday.
In late October, Reuters reported Rapid7 was in “early” discussions about a potential acquisition deal with several private equity firms, among them Bain Capital, Advent and EQT.
A previous sale exploration process by Rapid7, which Reuters had reported about in February 2023, was later dropped.
Subsequently, Rapid7 faced pressure from Jana Partners to prompt a sale of the company, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal in June.
Rapid7 offers a number of different security tools, including extended detection and response (XDR) and security information and event management (SIEM), which are used by security operations teams to pinpoint threats amid the massive amount of security data that is generated by today’s IT systems.
Recent years have seen numerous publicly traded cybersecurity vendors taken private through deals with private equity investors, including KnowBe4, Proofpoint, SailPoint, Ping Identity and Darktrace.
