Business Software Giant SAP Acquires Qualtrics for $8 Billion

Last week, a total of 32 M&A deals took place, with $34.3 billion of capital invested. Six deals were worth over $1 billion, constituting 91.5% of the deal value last week. Eight of the deals were for manufacturing firms, accounting for $15.7 billion capital invested. Another eight companies acquired were information technology firms. The largest deal was a $13.2-billion cash acquisition of Johnson Controls’ Power Solutions Business by Brookfield Business Partners.

• German business software maker SAP has entered an agreement to buy Qualtrics for an $8 billion price tag. A 14-year-old Utah startup, Qualtrics’s software collects marketing data on customers and provides insights into their sentiment towards the company. SAP hopes the acquisition will challenge Salesforce’s lead in the customer relationship management (CRM) software space.

• Athenahealth, a developer of healthcare SaaS, has agreed to a $5.7 billion public-to-private LBO by Elliot Management and Veritas Capital. The Watertown, Massachusetts company’s cloud-based software is used to track revenue from patients, physicians, and hospitals. The deal, which represents a long-running takeover effort by Elliot Management, will merge Athenahealth with the former GE Healthcare unit that Veritas acquired earlier this year.

• Apptio, a cloud-based software provider of IT management, has agreed to sell itself for $1.94 billion to Vista Equity Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm. Apptio provides digital tools to help leaders in IT manage, plan, and optimize their technology investments across physical premises and in the cloud.

• Farelogix, a provider of distribution technology and services for the aviation industry, has agreed to an acquisition by Sabre (NAS: SABR) for $360 million cash. A publicly traded spin off of American Airlines, Sabre is also a provider of airline specific services for distribution and operations. Farelogix’s services have been in competition with Sabre’s for years, with their technology being used to bypass middlemen such as Sabre.

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• Arcosa (NYS: ACA), a Dallas-based manufacturer of infrastructure-related products, just made a $315 million acquisition of ACG Materials. ACG, headquartered in Norman, Oklahoma, mines, mills, and produces a broad range of specialty materials, specifically products sold for the infrastructure, agriculture, and food industries. The acquisition will expand both companies’ distribution of infrastructure-related materials.