San Fran PE firm buys big biometrics company

Cross Match Technologies, one of the largest providers of biometrics, has been acquired by PE firm Francisco Partners.

I spoke to David Buckley, when he was named CEO of Cross Match in March 2011.

At that time, he said his goal with the company was to “continue the evolution of the company from being just a technology player into providing a full set of solutions for the customer.”

Buckley is traveling until mid-August, but I'm hoping to speak to John Hinmon, who's in charge of marketing and some M&A activity at the company.
I've left a couple of messages for Tom Ludwig COO at Francisco Partners, but haven't heard back yet. The company web site says the group provides "transformational capital for technology companies."

It has 55 portfolio companies I didn't notice any other physical security companies when I glanced at their list of investments.  The FP statement notes the Cross Match has “secured significant contracts with the most discerning government clients.”

Cross Match, which makes fingerprint, palm and full hand scanners, facial recognition, iris scanning, document readers and biometric software, has contracts with DoD and DHS among others. In the private sector side,  Cross Match works in hospitality, gaming and financial services. It has 400 employees, 5,000 customers worldwide and over 250,000 products deployed in over 80 countries

Founded in1996 and based in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., Cross Match also has offices in Washington D.C., Quebec and in Jena, Germany. It does cross-engineering with its office in Germany and has several partners it works with in Asia.

Terms of the deal were not released.