Israel’s Nice Systems in talks to buy rival Verint for $1.5 bn: report

Israel's Nice Systems, a provider of telephone voice recording, data security, and surveillance systems, is in talks to buy rival Verint for $1.5 billion in cash and stock, the Calcalist financial newspaper yesterday reported without saying where it got the information.

The two companies have been holding talks for more than a month, the newspaper said, for a deal under which Nice would buy Verint at a 25-per cent premium to its US share price.

Founded 1994, New York-based Verint, which has a market value of $1.26 billion, provides analytic solutions for communications, interception, digital video security and surveillance software.

Its products are used by governments and enterprises in making sense of the vast information they collect to meet performance and security goals. Verint solutions are used by more than 10,000 organisations in 150 countries.

Verint, formerly known as Comverse Infosys, is a 41 per cent-owned subsidiary of Comverse Technology. Nearly half of its 2,800 workforce are located in Israel.

With market capitialisation of $2.1 billion,Ra'anana, Israel-based Nice makes solutions that manage and analyse multimedia content and transactional data, such as telephony, web, radio and video communications.

The company serves various industries, such as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, outsourcers, retail, media, travel, service providers, and utilities.