YARMOUTH, Maine—North American enterprises are constantly looking for "new frontiers" in order to grow, said Jonny Gray, Control Risks' director of global client risk services for the Americas. To successfully conduct business in emerging markets such as Asia and sub-Sah
The news came out this morning that SCM Microsystems, a logical access manufacturer, and Hirsch Electronics, a physical access manufacturer, are merging.
Although they kept the numbers out of the press release, Sam found an SEC filing that makes the deal look like "a $30-million acquisition of Hirsch by SCM, with Hirsch shareholders acquiring another $14.1 million worth of warrants to buy more SCM stock at $3 a share, which is about double the price it's trading at right now on NASDAQ."
There's a lot of buzz in the market about logical-physical convergence on the access control side and at first blush, this seems to be a good move for both companies to better compete in this space. But I wonder if there is enough market demand for these types of solutions right now? The press release says "the combination of SCM and Hirsch is expected to result in a new security products leader at a time of escalating market demand for converged security solutions leveraging smart cards and smart chip-enabled devices." I'm hoping to have more for next week's newswire.
