For people interested in local M&A deals, April started with one of the biggest rumors of the year: Walmart reportedly working to buy Somerville-based PillPack for under $1 billion.
If confirmed, the move would position one of Amazon’s fiercest competitors a step ahead in the space of online pharmacy services. As a quick takeaway from this story, remember that any acquisition that makes sense for Amazon will probably make sense for Walmart (and Target, too).
Overall, in April we tracked down ten M&A deals and no company shutting down. Two local companies, Everbridge and TripAdvisor, went shopping in Northern Europe, with the acquisition of a Norway- and an Iceland-based startup, respectively.
Another big story from April is the acquisition of news aggregation website Digg by Boston-based BuySellAds, an advertising tech company founded in 2008.
FYI, we cover M&A news in the BostInno Beat newsletter every weekday. Stay on top of who’s getting funded by signing up right here. See you in your inbox!
Here are the BostInno Departed from April 2018:
The Shuttered:
• As far as we could tell, no startups shut down in April.
The Merged and Acquired:
• Local PE firm Advent International is going to merge two companies that they purchased a majority stake in: Clearent, a Missouri payments company, and FieldEdge, a field service management company.
• Boston-based American Well, one of the largest telehealth companies in the U.S., is acquiring Avizia, a Reston, Va.-based telemedicine startup. American Well said it plans to complete the acquisition by the end of the second quarter.
• Marlborough, Mass.-based Boston Scientific has acquired Securus Medical Group, Xconomy reported. Boston Scientific said it paid $40 million up front for the stake in Securus that it did not already own.
• BuySellAds, a Boston-based advertising tech company founded in 2008, has acquired a majority stake in Digg, a news aggregator website that presents itself as "the homepage of the Internet."
• Boston-based independent advertising agency Connelly Partners has acquired Strategem, a 20-year-old agency based in Dublin, for an undisclosed amount.
• Newton-based C&K, an electromechanical switches manufacturer, has agreed to acquire Vuillermoz, a micro-mechanical components company located in St. Claude, France. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• Burlington-based public company Everbridge is acquiring Unified Messaging Systems, an Oslo, Norway-based company, for $34 million. UMS was particularly attractive for Everbridge because of its technology and its customer base, BBJ reported.
• Sparefoot Inc. acquired SiteLink Software to strengthen their presence in the self-storage market. Boston-based Cove Hill Partners now owns a majority of the combined company.
• TripAdvisor, this year’s public Tech Madness bracket runner-up, acquired Iceland-based Bokun, a provider of business management technology for the tours, attractions and experiences industry. The company will remain based in Iceland, with immediate plans to expand the team.
• Vistra has entered an agreement to acquire Radius from private equity firm Hg. Headquartered in Boston, Radius is a provider of international expansion services.
If you think there’s a startup missing from this list, email Lucy at lmaffei@americaninno.com
