cleaned up”, there seemed to be skeletons in the closet. Wednesday afternoon trading was suspended after what the stock exchange called “certain conditions”. The shares fell around 7% on the news. Microsoft acquisition On 8 January 2008, it was announced that the board of FAST had unanimously accepted a $1.2 billion takeover offer from Microsoft. Microsoft had secured the backing of FAST's two largest institutional shareholders, Orkla and Hermes Focus Asset Management Europe. As of 24 April 2008, 97.37% of all FAST shares were controlled by MACS Holdings Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corp. The stock was de-listed from Oslo Stock Exchange 16 May 2008. On 26 November 2008, it was reported that FAST Search had laid off 25 employees as a result of the acquisition by Microsoft. As more information came to light about the major readjustment of the accounts, it was reported that Microsoft might not have completed its due diligence adequately. On 2 December 2009, Microsoft sold FAST's Folio and NXT businesses to Rocket Software. The complementary products were application suites used by businesses to publish and index reference material onto discs, network workstations, and online. Criminal Investigation On 24 May 2008, Norwegian news website E24.no reported that the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway had asked police to investigate anomalies it had uncovered in the FAST accounts. On 13 October 2008, Norwegian Økokrim raided FAST's offices in Oslo. Under scrutiny by the Norwegian police for possible fraudulent behaviour prior to the FAST acquisition by Microsoft, former founder and CEO, John Lervik, resigned from the wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary on 23 January 2009. CTO and Microsoft Distinguished Engineer, Bjørn Olstad, then assumed Lervik's duties as the head of Microsoft's Enterprise Search Group. See also Ezmo References Computer companies of Norway Software companies established in 1997 Companies based in Oslo Companies formerly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange Microsoft acquisitions Software companies of Norway