PE firm Sterling Partners outbids Wi-Lan for patent licensing company Mosaid

US-based private equity firm Sterling Partners yesterday made a $590-million bid for Canadian patent licensing company Mosaid Technologies, trumping a $524.5-million hostile bid from Wi-Lan Inc.

Sterling Partners, which has about $5 billion of assets under management, is offering $46 in cash per Mosaid share, compared to a $42 a share in cash offer from Wi-LAN.

Its offer represents a premium of 45.3 per cent to the closing price of Mosaid's stock on 17 August, the last trading day prior to Wi-LAN's initial unsolicited offer, and a 9.5-per cent premium to Wi-LAN's amended offer of $42 per share.

Sterling's offer came more than two months after the board of Mosaid rejected an unsolicited $38 a share bid from Wi-Lan, and started looking for a higher bid.

Wi-Lan, which had raised its bid last week to $42 a share, said that this was its final offer. (See: Technology patent firm Wi-LAN raises hostile bid for Mosaid to $524.5 million)

Ottawa-based Wi-Lan has more than 1,400 issued or pending patents covering a wide range of communication and consumer electronics products including 3G and 4G handsets, Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, Wi-Fi/DSL routers, xDSL infrastructure equipment, cellular base stations and digital television receivers, while its same city rival, Mosaid, has a much larger patent portfolio of 2,822 patents and applications covering semiconductor and telecommunications technologies.