Safran narrows Morpho acquisition to five bidders

Safran has narrowed the sale of its biometric identification unit Morpho to a shortlist of five bidders including SIM card manufacturers Gemalto and Oberthur, according to a report by Reuters.

The move comes a couple weeks after private equity fund Advent made a bid for Morpho with the intention of merging it with Advent-owned Oberthur Technologies.

In addition to Gemalto and Oberthur, which is backed by private equity firm Advent, Safran’s board has selected KKR, Bain Capital and CVC Capital Partners as potential buyers.

The report said that all five offers were worth about 2 billion euros (US$2.2 billion), with each bidder asked to follow up with a binding offer in September.

A Safran spokesperson declined to comment on the shortlist of bidders.

In late June, Safran said that it would likely eliminate a few of the 12 initial bidders before moving onto a second round of bidding in the fall.

Safran began the sale process of Morpho back in March as part of its overall strategy to focus more on airplane-engine manufacturing.

Article Topics

acquisition  |  biometrics  |  Gemalto  |  identity verification  |  morpho  |  Oberthur Technologies  |  SAFRAN