Cisco ups offer for Tandberg by extra $400 million

Network giant Cisco has increased its original offer for Norwegian video telepresence provider Tandberg by $400m after saying that it would not increase its offer.

At a Telepresence conference last week Chris Dedicoat, President of European Markets at Cisco, said: “The company believes that the price it has offered for Tandberg represents the value of the company.”

However, Tandberg shareholders rebuffed Cisco's original offer of $3bn (£1.8bn), prompting the new offer of £3.4bn (£2bn).

Cisco said that the new offer will only be on the table until 1 December - but that it needs the agreement of 90 per cent of Tandberg shareholders to secure the deal.

The hike in Cisco's bid indicates how important the acquisition is to the company, which currently offers high-end Telepresence technology to market leaders. The deal with Tandberg would give it access to video conferencing technology aimed at the mid-market.

In addition, businesses wanting to save money on travel will invest significantly in collaboration and unified communications technology in the future according to commentators. IT market intelligence firm IDC showed that the unified communications market in Europe was worth £1.6bn in 2008, but is predicted to reach £8.1bn by 2013.