Thales completes the €4.8 billion acquisition of Gemalto to create a global leader in digital identity and security employing 80,000 people. 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.
This combination creates a world-class leader with an unrivalled 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.
R&D will be at the core of the new Group, with its 3,000 researchers and 28,000 engineers dedicated to teh cause. 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.
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.