Blue Coat to sell itself to Symantec, abandoning IPO plans

San Francisco

BLUE Coat Systems seemed poised to begin life as a public company, after selling itself to a private equity firm last year.

Now, the cyber security software company plans to sell itself to Symantec instead.

Blue Coat said late on Sunday that it would sell itself to Symantec for US$4.65 billion. As part of the deal, Blue Coat's chief executive, Greg Clark, will take over as the chief executive of the combined security software maker.

To help finance the t…