Two companies have recently made announcements on acquiring startups. Here’s the latest on Canadian companies making acquisitions.
Dye & Durham acquires two legal tech companies
Dye & Durham, a provider of cloud-based software and technology solutions for legal and business professionals, announced it has acquired two legal tech companies as part of its acquisition strategy. The company purchased the assets of Cyberbahn and Marque d’Or from Thomson Reuters Canada. Cyberbahn and Marque d’Or specializes in corporate search and registration, and litigation support services.
“With the addition of Cyberbahn and Marque d’Or, Dye & Durham will continue to maintain focus on innovation and best-in-class technology and customer service,” said Matt Proud, CEO of Dye & Durham.
Dye & Durham has also acquired Index Property Information (Index PI), a real estate search software company based in the United Kingdom. With the acquisition of Index PI, Dye & Durham plans to expand its legal solutions into the UK.
“Index PI is recognized as an industry leader across England and Wales,” said Proud, “Combining this strong product offering with Dye & Durham’s technology expertise and growing presence in the UK legal industry, we will be able to deliver a complete, best-in-class solution to our customers.”
The Toronto-based company said these acquisitions add to Dye & Durham’s broader acquisition strategy, while adding to its portfolio of legal tech services focused on Canadian and UK markets.
In a rare move for a Canadian tech company, Dye & Durham Corp. filed for a $125-million IPO last September, before deciding to postpone its attempt to go public after facing a tough market.
Epik acquires Vancouver-based BitMitigate
Vancouver-based cybersecurity company BitMitigate has been acquired by Epik, a domain registration service and web-hosting company. The financial terms of the acquisition are undisclosed.
BitMitigate offers protection for websites from a host of online threats including distributed denial of service attacks, which attempt to crash websites by overloading them with traffic requests. The company offers a suite of both free and paid security tools, with the goal of providing enterprise-level online services to mass-market customers.
BitMitigate will continue to operate as a wholly owned division of Epik, according to the announcement, and BitMitigate founder Nicholas Lim will become Epik’s chief technology officer. BitMitigate’s day-to-day operations will remain largely unchanged, said Lim, but the merger will allow the company to continue to grow within Epik, which is located in Seattle.
Both BitMitigate and Epik have received criticism in recent years for not denying their services to far-right and neo-Nazi websites that have been dropped by other providers like GoDaddy and cybersecurity company Cloudfare. In a blog post on Epik’s website, CEO Rob Monster described the decision as a nonpartisan free speech issue, arguing that “de-platforming” actions taken by GoDaddy and others were tantamount to “digital censorship.”
