Cisco acquires minority stake in Russia's Parallels

US-RUSSIA-PARALLELS-CISCO:Cisco acquires minority stake in Russia's Parallels

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Networking equipment company Cisco Systems Inc has acquired a small minority stake in Russian software developer Parallels, Parallels said on Thursday.

Parallels said in a statement that Cisco has bought 1 percent of the company and added that the stake sale does not rule out a possible initial public offering of the Russian firm.

"We are looking at all possible ways to ensure sufficient liquidity: dividend payouts, IPO, mergers and acquisitions," Parallel's press service said, citing the company's founder and chairman of the board of directors Sergei Belousov.

The price of the deal with Cisco has not been revealed, but Cisco will get a seat on Parallels board of directors, the press release said.

At the end of last year the company, which does not disclose financial results, announced that it aims to expand its cloud business and solutions based on the Unified Data Center platform by 20-26 percent annually in the next three years.

(Reporting by Anastasia Teterevleva; Writing by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Douglas Busvine)

---