On Friday, 3Com (Computers, Communication and Compatibility) confirmed that private-equity firm Bain Capital Partners had acquired the company for close to $2.2 billion.
As part of the deal, Bain will toss China's largest networking company, Huawei Technologies, a minority stake in 3Com, according to the Wall Street Journal. As it turns out, 3Com already owns a Chinese networking operation called H3C, which it bought back from a 2003 joint venture with Huawei for $882 million. Bain has an existing noncompete with 3Com's H3C, which the WSJ says help facilitate the deal. Indeed, Canada's Nortel Networks was also supposedly interested in 3Com, but the company may have walked away because Bain secured the partnership of Huawei.
Says 3Com's co-founder and Ethernet inventor, Bob Metcalfe (pictured right): "I hope they keep calling it 3Com so I can keep saying I founded it." Metcalfe left 3Com in 1990 and is now a general partner at Polaris Venture Partners.
