During a special meeting held for stockholders by the US-based CRM company, 76.5 million shares voted in favour of the takeover by the investor consortium, while 15.2 million shares voted against it
Zendesk gets approval from its stockholders for its go-private deal. (Credit: aymane jdidi from Pixabay)
Zendesk, a US-based customer relationship management (CRM) company, has secured approval from its shareholders for its previously announced $10.2bn takeover by a consortium led by Hellman & Friedman (H&F) and Permira.
As per the terms of the deal announced in June 2022, shareholders of the publicly-listed Zendesk will be paid $77.5 per share in cash by the consortium.
During a special meeting held for stockholders by the CRM company, 76.5 million shares voted in favour of the deal, while 15.2 million shares voted against it.
Zendesk CEO and founder Mikkel Svane said: “Today’s vote by our stockholders validates our belief that this transaction will deliver immediate value to our stockholders and superior solutions to our customers.
“We thank our stockholders for their support and are pleased to now shift our focus to the important next steps toward completing the transaction.”
The investor consortium also includes a fully-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) and GIC, which is the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund.
Zendesk had engaged Qatalyst Partners and Goldman Sachs & Co. as its financial advisors in connection with the deal, while Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz is the legal advisor.
The deal, which is subject to customary conditions, is anticipated to close in Q4 2022.
Zendesk is engaged in connecting brands with customers over telephony, email, chat, social channels, messaging, review sites, communities, and help centres.
Recently, it launched two artificial intelligence (AI) solutions called Intelligent Triage and Smart Assist for helping businesses in automatically triaging customer support requests and accessing useful data at scale.
Earlier this year, the CRM company scrapped a previously planned acquisition of SurveyMonkey owner Momentive Global. This was after Zendesk failed to get the approval of its shareholders.