Blackstone completes $400 million investment in FireEye
- Dan Primack, author of Axios Pro Rata
The Blackstone Group has completed its $400 million preferred stock investment in cybersecurity firm FireEye (Nasdaq: FEYE), with ClearSky also participating. The deal was announced in late November.
The big picture: FireEye stunned the cybersecurity world last week by admitting its systems were breached by what it called "a nation with top-tier offensive capabilities." The disclosure now appears to have been the bleeding edge of a much larger hack that was allegedly conducted by Russia's foreign intelligence service, with victims including the U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments.
Details: The preferred shares convert into common at $17.25 per share. FireEye stock closed trading Friday at $13.83, having fallen more than 10% last week due to the intrusion.
The bottom line: "The hacking operation exposed as many as hundreds of thousands of government and corporate networks to potential risk and alarmed national-security officials in the Trump administration as well as executives at FireEye, some of whom view it as far more significant than a routine case of foreign cyber espionage." — Dustin Volz, WSJ