The power struggle over Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALDN; TASE: ALDN) is now nearing its conclusion. The company's founder and CEO Yanki Margalit is flying out tonight to the US to meet with major institutional investors in a final attempt to persuade them to oppose the sale of his company. The company called a press conference today in its Petach Tikvah headquarters, in which Aladdin's aggressive new revenue targets were presented as well as its conciliatory message regarding the takeover attempts by the Vector Capital San Francisco-based private equity fund.
"Our message is both non-confrontational and to the point," said Margalit. "The company's shareholders must soon make their decision. Naturally I believe that the company is worth more than is being offered today, but my own personal announcement is less important at the moment. I will try to convince the other shareholders, but at the end of the day they must decide."
The fate of the takeover attempt, according to Margalit, will be determined by a small group of five to six institutional investors.
Discussing his vision of Aladdin's future he added. ""Our mission is to become one of the ten leading IT security companies in the world."
Asked if in light of the global consolidation in the sector it would not be better to be merged with its competitor SafeNet, which was acquired 18 months ago by Vector Capital, Margalit said. "For sure at a certain price there is a lot of logic to merging. The question is in what way, with which products, and how much value it will give to shareholders. In every place in the market that there is direct competition between us and SafeNet, we beat them. Ten years ago they were ten times bigger than us in DRM, while today we are 1.5 times larger than them. We've simply kicked them out of the market in that sector."
Regarding the possibility of bringing new partners into Aladdin to dilute Vector's shares and prevent the takeover, Margalit responded. First of all the shareholders must decide if they believe in the strategy and the current management."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on October 19, 2008
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