The proposed deal did not get the required number of votes from Five9 shareholders to approve the all-stock merger that was announced by the parties in July 2021
Image – Zoom terminates $14.7bn acquisition of Five9. (Credit: Coolcaesar/Wikipedia.org)
Zoom Video Communications and Five9 have mutually terminated their previously announced $14.7bn deal after failing to get support from shareholders of the latter.
Last month, the all-stock deal came under the scanner of the US government over possible risks to national security.
The deal was announced in July 2021. As per its terms, Five9’s stockholders were to receive 0.5533 of Zoom’s shares for each share of Five9.
Five9 is a publicly-listed contact centre as a service (CCaaS) provider based in California. The company operates a virtual call centre platform apart from providing resold intrastate service and resold interstate service in certain US states.
Zoom had pursued the deal with the belief that the combination of Five9’s CCaaS solution with its own communications platform will transform the manner in which organisations connect with their customers.
The parties said that the proposed deal did not get the required number of votes from Five9 shareholders to approve the merger. As a result, the CCaaS provider will continue to operate as an independent publicly-traded company.
Zoom and the cloud contact centre solutions provider plan to continue their existing partnership. This includes support for integrations between the companies’ respective Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS) and CCaaS solutions and joint go-to-market efforts.
Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope said: “We had the opportunity to engage extensively with our shareholders since our transaction announcement. We greatly appreciate their feedback and confidence in Five9’s future prospects and share their views regarding the significant potential for value creation as a standalone company.”
Zoom CEO and founder Eric Yuan said that the contact centre market continues to be a strategic priority for the company, which is set to launch its own cloud-based contact centre solution called ‘Zoom Video Engagement Center’.
The contact centre solution will be rolled out in early 2022.
Yuan said: “Video Engagement Center will be a flexible, easy-to-use solution that connects businesses and their customers. We are building this new solution with the same scalability and trusted architecture that has made Zoom the platform of choice for businesses around the world.
“We also plan to maintain our valued existing contact centre partnerships with companies like Five9, Genesys, NICE inContact, Talkdesk, and Twilio.”