Record Mode for Swedish technology companies – New Technology

2014 could be another record year for the purchase of Swedish technology company. It shows Ny Teknik unique mapping. Behind the Microsoft miljardköp of Minecraft hidden many big stores.

     Minecraft’s creator Markus “Notch” Persson and Carl Manneh founded Mojang with James Porsér (not in picture). Sales at Microsoft make them billionaires. Photo: Jörgen Appelgren
     

Swedish Mojang, the company behind the hit game Minecraft, was purchased in last week by Microsoft. The purchase price was SEK 18 billion. So staggering amount has no Swedish innovation company reached since auction site eBay bought Skype for 23 billion in 2005, it shows Ny Teknik compilation of Swedish technology company bought in the last ten years.

Totalt are 57 acquisitions in the survey. At least eight of them have been sold to more than one billion. A recent example is the Tail-f, which develops management system that is built into the telecommunications network to facilitate the handling and operation. The technology got the American networking giant Cisco to post 1.2 billion at the beginning of the summer.

Billion shops are very likely even more – purchase price is unknown in many of the shops. Example, it has not disclosed how much Canadian Aastra paid for telecom company Telepo the beginning of the year. Nor what the Korean Samsung gave for Nano Radio’s power efficient wifikretsar 2012 Or what Nokia did for Scalado imaging the same year.

The buying rate shows no signs slowing down. On the contrary, in 2014 a new record. After nearly nine months are already eight shops on this year’s list, the second highest since 2011, when we recorded eleven acquisitions over the years.

Striking is that it is mostly foreign buyers of Swedish spearheads. Only two of the 57 companies sold remains in Swedish hands. The majority of buyers, over 60 percent are American companies. In addition to Microsoft, for example, Google, Apple and Intel bought Swedish companies.

– It’s a bit surprising that only two of the buyers were Swedish. Such buying suggests that it is difficult to build and scale up businesses on Swedish ground, and it is quite negative for Sweden, says Pontus Braunerhjelm, Professor of Economics at KTH and CEO of Entrepreneurship Forum.

Han find that foreign takeovers can be problematic for many reasons. If buyers had been Swedish so the ideas could strengthen Swedish industry. Sweden also risk missing out on the new spin-off companies that are often built around large companies. The country may lose jobs when growth in the acquired companies.

At the same time he believes that lucrative big business with foreign giants can stimulate other Swedish entrepreneurs to start new innovative businesses.

And the company bought up does not mean that jobs will disappear. It turned out an examination in New Technology three years ago of ten high-profile purchases.

Many of the entrepreneurs who earned a hack on sale chooses also to start new companies and investing in new Swedish technology companies. The most famous example is Skype founder Niklas Zennström today invests in other technology companies through his venture capital firm Atomico.

But if all the promising companies bought up, then get the Sweden never any new major label?

– It is very difficult to become a new Ericsson, says Sami Niemi, a founder of Scalado in Lund, which was sold to Nokia two years ago.

There are several reasons to sell in Instead of building the company forward on their own. One is that many companies are taking the venture to manage the development phase.

– Thus, the goal is to realize the investment, and then it is easier to sell than to create a new major label, which often require additional capital and often new financiers with a different profile, he says.

A small company may also need the bigger company muscle to grow faster and reach a larger market. An example is Malmö Company Connect Blue, which is developing technology for wireless connectivity. The company had 35 employees when it was acquired in June by Swiss U-blox for SEK 185 million. Rolf Nilsson, who was president and co-founder, says that the deal has been significant.

– It gives us a greater ability to develop our technology to new applications. We are looking for six people, mostly programmers, he says.