Posted by Virus Bulletin on Aug 9, 2007
Corporate reshaping prepares company for floatation.
Russian security experts Kaspersky Lab have announced the setting up of a board of directors to run the company, as a step along the road to market floatation. While the people at the top of the company remain largely unchanged - Natalya Kasperksy has become Chairman of the Board, while Eugene Kaspersky is now CEO - the move shows a clear intention to IPO sometime soon.
Kaspersky's booming growth over the last ten years - turnover increase reckoned at 70% per year - along with the respect earned by their products, which routinely top detection charts and win 'Best Buy' awards in reviews, have led to intense interest in the financial status of the company, whose finances have always been kept quiet. The move to IPO will finally reveal just how profitable Kaspersky has become.
With a highly efficient and well-staffed lab, and offering technology popular in many rebranded and multi-engine products, Kaspersky is also widely tipped as a possible candidate for takeover by one of the giants of the software industry, alongside several other mid-to-large-sized security firms. Both Google and HP are regularly suggested to be in the market for an in-house malware lab, and the change in structure may serve to strengthen the rumours of a possible buyout. Eugene Kaspersky, however, seems confident in the company's prospects as a standalone. 'We are going after an ambitious, but realistic goal - we hope to become one of the top three anti-virus developers in the world in three years and thus one of the major players in the IT security market,' he said.
Posted on 09 August 2007 by Virus Bulletin
