‘Pay us to shut up’

Posted by on March 30, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly Add another deal to the hit list for plaintiffs lawyers. The ink was barely dry on Thoma Bravo’s $143m all-cash offer for PLATO Learning late last week before the ambulance-chasing law firms launched their ‘investigations’ into whether the online education company did right by its shareholders. Equally wrongheaded lawsuits (at least in [...]

IronPlanet: heavy metal and high margins

Posted by on March 29, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly We recently noted that for the IPO market, thin is in. The offering sizes for many of the would-be debutants have been trimmed, as have the initial valuations. But in one area, some of the companies that are looking to come to market are still very, very bloated: funding. Force10 Networks, which [...]

More on Intersil-Techwell

Posted by on March 26, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly We looked at Intersil’s purchase of Techwell on Thursday, primarily from the perspective of the senseless lawsuits that are swirling around the transaction. But fittingly for the largest acquisition of a US-based chip company since mid-2007, there’s a lot more that’s noteworthy about the deal. (Note: The equity value of the transaction [...]

Ambulance chasing in tech M&A

Posted by on March 25, 2010

Contact:  Brenon Daly Here’s another sign that tech M&A is getting more active: plaintiffs lawyers have come slithering back into the process. Instead of chasing ambulances, these lawsuit-loving lawyers are now following deal flow. Their tactic: before the ink is even dry on an M&A announcement, threaten an investigation into possible fiduciary breeches by the [...]

The ‘new normal’ in new offerings

Posted by on March 23, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly Back in the third quarter of 2009, when the economy had pulled through the worst of the recession, we floated the idea that we looked likely to be entering a ‘new normal’ period for tech M&A. The term had been used to characterize a number of segments of the financial world, and [...]

A nope from Novell

Posted by on March 22, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly The only surprise about Novell turning down the unsolicited $2bn offer from Elliott Associates was the timing. In an unorthodox move, the software vendor said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to the hedge fund on Saturday morning, when most thoughts were turning to a full day of March Madness. (And what a maddening [...]

Peer 1 in hosting hookup

Posted by on March 19, 2010

by Brenon Daly, Philbert Shih In what was pretty much a straight customer acquisition play, Canadian hosting provider PEER 1 Hosting said Thursday that it has picked up Atlanta-based VIA Net.Works USA. Although terms were not disclosed, the purchase of VIA Net.Works, which had $2m in trailing revenue, is almost certainly in the low single [...]

Wayfinder finds its way to a decent exit

Posted by on March 17, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly Even in write-offs, it’s not impossible for companies to come out ahead. That’s what we were thinking when we saw the news that Vodafone pulled the shutter down on the Wayfinder Systems business that it acquired a little more than a year ago. Of course, in the year since the second-largest wireless [...]

A rebound, but still short

Posted by on March 16, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly Chordiant Software’s $161.5m sale to Pegasystems, which was announced on Monday and is expected to close next quarter, marks the 10th time this year that a company listed on the NYSE or Nasdaq has been set up to be erased from one of the exchanges. Granted, not all of the announced deals [...]

Chordiant hits the bid

Posted by on March 15, 2010

Contact: Brenon Daly When Chordiant Software received an unsolicited offer from CDC Software in early January, we were pretty certain that deal had roughly 0% chance of getting done. We noted that Chordiant had a poison pill in place that would make it extremely difficult – and time-consuming – for CDC to finalize the deal. [...]

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