Redknee to Pay $52M for NSN's BSS Unit

Another piece of Nokia Networks appears to have found a buyer, as Redknee Inc. (Toronto TSX: RKN) has agreed to pay up to €40 million ($52.5 million) to acquire its business support systems (BSS) business.

The deal, announced early Wednesday morning, has Redknee paying €15 million ($19.7 million) in cash plus performance bonuses of up to €25 million ($32.8 million) more, to be paid over a period of 12 to 36 months. About 1,200 NSN employees would join Redknee, mainly in Berlin, Bangalore and Wroclaw, Poland. The deal is expected to close before July.

Earlier this week, NSN had announced the pending sale of its optical division to Marlin Equity Partners . (See NSN to Sell Optical Business.)

Why this matters
Redknee is a relatively small player next to Amdocs Ltd. (NYSE: DOX), Comverse Inc. (Nasdaq: CNSI) and Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL), but it's a feisty competitor, and CEO Lucas Skoczkowski hasn't been shy about wanting the company to grow. Redknee raised about $18 million in September, partly as an acquisition fund. As we identified at the time, NSN's BSS assets likely would have been on Redknee's hit list. (See Is That a Redknee War Chest? .)

The deal would add to Redknee's portfolio and would bring NSN's Tier 1 customers as well.

Since NSN announced its restructuring in November 2011, the BSS business has been assumed to be one of the non-core assets the company would be willing to sell off.Light Reading first heard of interested suitors for the business in March, and rumors of a sale being close spread in August.

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— Craig Matsumoto, Managing Editor, Light Reading