Speedcast deal for Globecomm clears foreign investment review

Speedcast International has cleared one of the final regulatory hurdles for its $135 million acquisition of satellite communications competitor Globecomm and continues to expect the deal to close by the end of December.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. “determined that there are no unresolved national security concerns with respect to the acquisition,” Speedcast said Dec. 6.

CFIUS is an inter-agency committee that reviews the impact of acquisitions or other investments by foreign businesses into U.S. businesses on national security.

CFIUS reviewed this deal given Speedcast is headquartered in Sydney, Australia with Globecomm based out of Hauppage, New York.

For Speedcast, this is its second major acquisition within the past two years with significant government market implications. The company entered the U.S. and global public sector in November of last year when it closed the acquisition of another similar company in UltiSat. That deal also required a CFIUS review given UltiSat's headquarters are in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

First announced in August, the addition of Globecomm pushes Speedcast’s expected government market revenue to 22 percent of overall corporate sales, while the deal for UltiSat raised that mix to 16 percent from near-zero.

Speedcast is the same outfit that acquired the former CapRock commercial maritime business from Harris Corp., which started a portfolio reshaping after its 2015 acquisition of Exelis. Harris then divested its IT services business in the spring of last year, then in October of this year announced its mega-merger with L3 Technologies.