Thales Completes Acquisition Of Gemalto To Become A Global Leader In Digital Identity And Security

Completed in 15 months, the acquisition of Gemalto by Thales for €4.8 billion creates a Group on a new scale and a global leader in digital identity and security employing 80,000 people. The larger Thales will master all the technologies underpinning the critical decision chain for companies, organizations, and governments. Incorporating the talent and technologies of Gemalto, Thales will develop secure solutions to address the major challenges faced by our societies, such as unmanned air traffic management, data, and network cybersecurity, airport security or financial transaction security.

• Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) has today completed the acquisition of Gemalto (Euronext Amsterdam and Paris: GTO), creating a global leader in digital identity and security.
• With Gemalto, Thales will cover the entire critical decision chain in a digital world, from data generation via sensors, to real-time decision support.
• This acquisition increases Thales’s revenues to €19 billion and self-funded R&D to €1 billion a year, with 80,000 employees in 68 countries.

This combination creates a world-class leader with an unrivaled portfolio of digital identity and security solutions based on technologies such as biometry, data protection, and, more broadly, cybersecurity. Thales will thus provide a seamless response to customers, including critical infrastructure providers such as banks, telecom operators, government agencies, utilities, and other industries as they step up to the challenges of identifying people and objects and keeping data secure.

Research and Development: Inventing the World of Tomorrow

Thales and Gemalto share a passion for the advanced technologies that serve as a common foundation and focus for their 80,000 employees. Research and development (R&D) is at the core of the new Group, with its 3,000 researchers and 28,000 engineers dedicated to R&D. Thales has been developing state-of-the-art technologies to meet the most demanding requirements of customers around the world for decades. Today the Group has become a giant laboratory inventing the world of tomorrow, with a portfolio of 20,500 patents, of which more than 400 new ones were registered in 2018.

Technological Synergies

The new Thales will cover the entire critical decision chain in an increasingly interconnected and vulnerable world, with capabilities spanning software development, data processing, real-time decision support, connectivity, and end-to-end network management.

With €1 billion a year devoted to self-funded R&D, the Group will continue to innovate in its key markets, drawing in particular on its world-class digital expertise in the Internet of Things, Big Data, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity. The first illustrations are as wide as the Group’s portfolio:

• Banking: Big Data analytics
• Defense: biometrics
• Aerospace: unmanned traffic management
• Ground transportation: Internet of Things
• Space: Internet of Things
• Telecommunications: Big Data analytics

An Extended Global Footprint

Following this acquisition, Gemalto will form one of Thales’s seven global divisions, to be named Digital Identity and Security (DIS). Gemalto will interact with all of the Group’s civil and defense
customers and will significantly strengthen its industrial presence in 68 countries. Thales will considerably expand its operations in Latin America (2,500 employees, up from 600), triple its presence in Northern Asia (1,980, from 700), Southeast Asia (2,500, from 800) and India (1,150, from 400) and North America (6,660 employees, up from 4,600).

“With Gemalto, a global leader in digital identification and data protection, Thales has acquired a set of highly complementary technologies and competencies with applications in all of our five vertical markets, which are now redefined as aerospace; space; ground transportation; digital identity and security; and defense and security. These are the smart technologies that help people make the best choices at every decisive moment. The acquisition is a turning point for the Group’s 80,000 employees. Together, we are creating a giant in digital identity and security with the  capabilities to compete in the big leagues worldwide.” Patrice Caine, Chairman and CEO, Thales

About Gemalto 

Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the global leader in digital security, with 2017 annual revenues of €3 billion and customers in over 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world.

From secure software to biometrics and encryption, our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data so they stay safe and enable services in personal devices, connected objects, the cloud and in between.

Gemalto’s solutions are at the heart of modern life, from payment to enterprise security and the internet of things. We authenticate people, transactions and objects, encrypt data and create value for software – enabling our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things.

Our 15,000 employees operate out of 114 offices, 40 personalization and data centers, and 35 research and software development centers located in 47 countries.

About Thales

The people who make the world go round – they rely on Thales. Our customers come to us with big ambitions: to make life better, to keep us safer. Combining a unique diversity of expertise, talents and cultures, our architect's design and deliver extraordinary high technology solutions. Solutions that make tomorrow possible, today. From the bottom of the oceans to the depths of space and cyberspace, we help our customers think smarter and act faster – mastering ever greater complexity at every decisive moment along the way. Thales generated revenues of €19 billion in 2018 with 80,000 employees in 68 countries

For more information visit www.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter.