Google parent Alphabet shelves efforts to acquire HubSpot
GOOGLE parent Alphabet has shelved efforts to acquire HubSpot, according to sources with knowledge of the matter, putting to bed the prospect of a takeover that would have ranked among the biggest of the year.
Shares of HubSpot, a customer relationship management company, fell as much as 19 per cent on Wednesday (Jul 10) in New York trading, the most since 2020. The shares closed down 12 per cent to US$492.31, giving the company a market value of about US$25 billion.
Alphabet had communicated its interest in a potential deal with HubSpot earlier this year, but the sides did not reach a point of detailed discussions around due diligence, said the sources, who asked not to be identified discussing confidential matters.
A representative for Alphabet did not have an immediate comment. A HubSpot spokesperson declined to comment.
Any deal for HubSpot would have been one of the biggest this year for a tech company, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, putting it in the same league as the pending US$34 billion acquisition of Ansys by Synopsys.
Buying Cambridge, Massachusetts-based HubSpot, which focuses on small to midsize enterprises, would have helped Alphabet compete with other players in that market such as Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.
A transaction also would have likely gotten bogged down in reviews by US antitrust regulators. Under the Biden Administration, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have been aggressively signalling their opposition to big-ticket M&A, forcing sizeable tech companies to rethink their plans to grow through acquisitions.
HubSpot shares had peaked in April at about US$682 apiece and had fallen 21 per cent since then before Wednesday. Shares in Alphabet have risen about 37 per cent this year. BLOOMBERG
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