Shares in UK cyber security group Sophos jumped as much as 7.8 per cent on Wednesday morning after it announced a deal to buy the commercial software business of US-based company Invincea.

Sophos rose to the top of the FTSE All-Share index, with shares at publication time up 6.6 per cent on an otherwise negative day, to 287p, just shy of the all-time high hit in November 2015.

The company will pay $100m in cash on the completion of the deal, expected to take place before the end of this financial year, with a potential further $20m payment based on earnings during the first year of ownership.

Invincea already has a strong presence in US government, healthcare and financial services sectors. Sophos said the deal provides a “significant growth opportunity”, and expects “rapidly integrate” Invincea’s technology into its own product line, selling its first products with Invincea’s machine learning technology this year.

Kris Hagerman, Sophos chief executive, said:

Invincea will strengthen Sophos’ leading next-gen endpoint protection with complementary predictive defenses that we believe will become increasingly important to the future of endpoint protection and allow us to take full advantage of this significant new growth opportunity. We are proud to welcome the Invincea team to Sophos and look forward to introducing the benefits of this advanced technology to our customers and partners worldwide.

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