Purchase of 3Com Stalled, But Not Yet Scuttled
Posted by: Tony Bradley
You might remember a couple years ago when President Bush supported a plan to sell management control of our sea ports to Dubai Ports, a United Arab Emirates (UAE) based company. There was significant backlash about the national security concerns of allowing an Arab company to control the U.S. ports and the deal was scrapped. Following immediately in the wake of that deal, Israel-based Checkpoint scrapped a deal to purchase software developer Sourcefire over concerns that a foreign company would control Snort, a popular open-source intrusion detection system (IDS). The 3Com deal threatens to be the latest deal scuttled over national security concerns. Bain Capital LLC sought to purchase 3Com, but with the Chinese Huawei Technologies capturing a minority stake as well. Congress has reservations about a Chinese company with close ties to the Chinese government having any ownership stake in a company that manufactures equipment used in public and private sector network security. Check out National security issues put Bain-Huawei bid for 3Com on hold for more information.


