Friday, February 27, 2015

j2 Global Extends Offer For Carbonite, Again

Los Angeles-based j2 Global said this morning that it has again extended its tender offer for all of the shares of Carbonite, until March 30th. j2 Global--which launched a hostile bid for Carbonite in December, said that so far, 5,602,174 shares of Carbonite's shares have been tendered. j2 said it is awaiting a move from Carbonite's board of directors, to avoid triggering a recently adopted preferred share rights agreement (aka "poison pill"), and is in discussions with Carbonite over involvement in that company's potential sale process. Carbonite's board rejected j2's unsolicited takeover offer in January, adopted the poison pill, and launched its own efforts to find a buyer under its own terms. Carbonite is a developer of an online backup service; j2 Global owns a very large portfolio of cloud based services, including in the backup area.