Tyco, Tycom reach purchase agreement

Tyco will acquire the 11% of Tycom it does not already own via an improved purchase offer that values Tycom at $15.42 per share and has been unanimously accepted by the boards of both companies.

The all-stock transaction follows Tyco’s offer earlier this month to buy the Tycom shares through an all-stock transaction that valued the company at $14 per share. In all, Tyco will repurchase the Tycom shares for $863.5 million--significantly less than the $2.13 billion raised from selling the same chares in Tycom’s August 2000 IPO.

In separate news, Tycom and Global Crossing recently settled all litigation against one another. In May 2000, Global Crossing filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Tycom--at the time, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tyco--alleging that the submarine network construction company applied information acquired through its work with Global Crossing to the construction of a network for Telefonica.

--Toby Weber, staff writer