Symantec Pushing Off Closing Of Veritas Sale To End Of January

Just about a week before it was expected to close its sale of storage business Veritas, Symantec said Monday that it would be pushing back the anticipated closing date about a month, to Jan. 29.

The original closing date was expected to be Jan. 1.

In October 2014, Symantec said it was pursuing a split of its storage and security businesses into two separate companies. In August of this year, the company said that, instead of splitting, it would be selling the Veritas storage division to the Carlyle Group for $8 billion. Symantec had acquired Veritas in 2005 for $10.2 billion.

[Related: 10 Things To Expect From Symantec In Coming Months]

The Symantec split is a move much anticipated by partners, who said the sale of storage business Veritas would help drive better focus at the vendor around security. The company in October completed the operational split of the two companies.

"The team at Carlyle and I continue to be very excited about Veritas, its strong brand and products, as well as its top-tier customer and partner base," Bill Coleman, who will become CEO of Veritas upon the closing of the transaction, said in a statement. "We see in Veritas an incredible opportunity for value creation and look forward to working alongside the strong existing Veritas team."

The announcement of the date change did not provide any information as to why the closing was being delayed, saying only that the transaction was "subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions." In an email to CRN, a Symantec spokesperson declined to provide any comment on why the transaction might have been delayed.

The change is only the latest hiccup that Symantec has encountered as it looks to navigate the company split. In November, reports emerged that two banks had pulled funding from the deal. At that time, a Symantec spokesperson said the split was still on track to complete Jan. 1.

In October, Symantec lost multiple top channel executives, including Adrian Jones, executive vice president and general manager of global sales and operations; Tom LaRocca, vice president of global channel programs and sales; and Sean Maxwell, vice president, global sales strategy and field enablement.

The Symantec spokesperson said the company didn’t anticipate there would be any impact on partners of the delayed closing date, saying it would be "business as usual."

Partners agreed that they didn't think the delay would have much, if any, impact on their business.

"The delay in the sale has no real impact that we can see in terms of Symantec's continued strategy, it's business as usual from what we can tell and we're excited to end the year strong with them," said Victor Villegas, vice president of sales and marketing at Aurora Enterprises, a Torrance, Calif.-based Symantec partner.

PUBLISHED DEC. 21, 2015