Intersil: Doubling down in Austin

Posted by on December 22, 2008

Contact: Brenon Daly Intersil’s purchase of Zilker Labs last week had more than a few echoes of its pickup of D2Audio last July: same buyer, same banker, same backyard and even a shared backer at the acquired company. Both Zilker Labs and D2Audio are based in Austin and drew venture money from Dallas-based Sevin Rosen. [...]

EA’s South Korean embrace

Posted by on December 19, 2008

This marks a change in strategy for the stumbling giant. And like the casual gaming trend we outlined last month, it signals a significant shift for the industry that will likely drive M&A well into the new year.

CA back in M&A

Posted by on December 18, 2008

Contact: Brenon Daly It turns out that there is some shopping going on out on Long Island, after all. Back in September, we noted that CA Inc had been out of the market for two years and that some bankers weren’t ‘bothering with the trip’ out to the company’s headquarters. (On a recent call with [...]

Telco equipment troubles

Posted by on December 16, 2008

Contact: Brenon Daly For communications infrastructure equipment vendors, it seems that the only thing worse than doing a major acquisition is not doing a major acquisition. At least that’s the only conclusion we can draw from the relative performance of Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel Networks in recent years. Shareholder returns since the Franco-American combination was announced [...]

National Lampoon CEO indicted

Posted by on December 16, 2008

A month ago, we wrote about one of the more unusual deals that we have seen in some time: National Lampoon picked up BarackObamaJokes.com just after the election. At the time, we noted that the acquisition was part of a larger shopping spree by the long-in-the-tooth humor site, which has inked a half-dozen deals so [...]

Online video: boom and bust

Posted by on December 15, 2008

As promising as the online video market may be, it has not exactly been rosy for the startups trafficking in the space. Several have burned out and had to sell for scraps. We have a feeling this is just the beginning.

NetApp: Barenaked savings

Posted by on December 15, 2008

Contact: Brenon Daly What do the Barenaked Ladies and SnapMirror for Open Systems have in common? Well, both have been canceled recently by NetApp in a bid to save money as growth rates at the storage giant continue to head south. The company is currently more than halfway through its fiscal year, which wraps at [...]

Buyer’s market

Posted by on December 11, 2008

Contact: Brenon Daly It’s a sign of the (dismal) times when an acquirer can offer a 250% premium for the shares of a target, and the stock is below where the company started at the beginning of 2008. (It’s just that kind of year.) That was the case with Vodafone’s $29m offer for Wayfinder Systems, [...]

GRC=Get Ready for Consolidation

Posted by on December 11, 2008

Contact: Brenon Daly After a pretty thin stretch of deals in the governance, risk and compliance (GRC) market, Thomson Reuters reached for startup Paisley Consulting last week. The deal comes after the two companies partnered for a year, but not in the conventional manner. Rather than the big company reselling the startup’s wares, Paisley actually [...]

M&A ramp-up for Facebook?

Posted by on December 9, 2008

The social network might not have landed its Twitter. But, as we predicted it would earlier this year, it has displayed a previously nonexistent willingness to make large acquisitions. Where might Facebook take its M&A now? We have an idea.

keep looking »