Digital Barriers acquires French business

AIM-listed Digital Barriers has made its third purchase of 2011 with the acquisition of Keeneo SAS.

The deal for France-based Keeneo follows Digital Barriers March acquisition of Essential Viewing Systems and June purchase of Zimiti.

London-headquartered Digital Barriers, which provides products and services to the homeland security market, says that Keeneo’s video analytics software is significant across the target sectors and geographies in which Digital Barriers operates.

Under the terms of the deal, Digital Barriers is to acquire the entire issued share capital of Keeneo for an initial consideration of €2 million. Additionally, dependent on the satisfaction of certain financial and operational targets in the period from completion to 31 March 2014, further payments to Keeneo could take deal value up to €6.5 million.

‘Keeneo’s [services] are highly effective, proven through their use in real-world, real-time situations and further enhance Digital Barriers’ existing surveillance offering,’ says Colin Evans, managing director of Digital Barriers.

Evans adds that Keeneo’s market focus fits in with Digital Barriers, particularly in the Middle East.

According to a statement the acquisition will align with previous business purchases such as Waterfall Solutions, Essential Viewing and COE. Analytics ability will allow Digital Barriers’ security and defence customers to increase efficiency and reduce operating costs.

Keeneo was founded in 2005 as a spin-out from INRIA, the French institute for computer science and automatic control research.

Benoit Georis, managing director of Keeneo, comments: ‘Since our spin-out from INRIA in 2005, Keeneo has been working on the development of premium video analytics software which, we believe, presents customers with a truly world-class intelligent surveillance solution.’

Keeneo counts Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport and Eurocopter as customers.

For the year ending 31 December 2010, Keeneo had reported turnover of €1.02 million with a pre-tax loss of €470,000.

Todd Cardy

Todd Cardy

Todd was Editor of GrowthBusiness.co.uk between 2010 and 2011 as well as being responsible for publishing our digital and printed magazines focusing on private equity and venture capital.

Related Topics