"Francisco Partners Ends Ownership of Crisis-Plagued Sandvine" 23 August 2024

US private equity firm Francisco Partners said it’s no longer the owner of troubled technology vendor Sandvine, which was blacklisted by the US government earlier this year for supplying mass surveillance and censorship technology...

...Over a period of several years, Sandvine struck controversial deals with several autocratic governments, including in Belarus, Egypt, Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. The company’s equipment was frequently used in these countries to censor content on the internet, such as by blocking independent news or social media websites, Bloomberg News previously reported...

...Sandvine has been in a state of upheaval since late February 2024, when the US Commerce Department placed it on a blacklist for providing “mass web-monitoring and censorship” technology to the Egyptian government. The company, originally founded in Canada, was acquired by San Francisco-based Francisco Partners and combined with Procera Networks in 2017, in a deal worth $444 million...

...Sandvine has recently carried out mass layoffs that may amount to hundreds of jobs lost internationally, according to four people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly...Financial difficulties have posed an existential threat to Sandvine’s operations, leaving the company’s executives and lenders planning options for a substantial restructuring...Inclusion on the blacklist all but killed the company’s efforts to win contracts with some US companies...Some US-based customers refused to communicate with the company following the blacklisting, fearing that they could fall afoul of the US government’s sanctions...Meanwhile, Sandvine was left with a stockpile of equipment stored in the US that it could not export or install, two of the people familiar with the company’s situation said. The company also struggled to build new equipment because it has been unable to obtain essential components manufactured by US companies...

...Sandvine said in a statement in late February that it was “working closely with government officials to understand, address and resolve their concerns.” Company representatives didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment about the change to its ownership...