And the Golden Tombstone goes to …

Posted by on December 23, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly It’s time to once again hand out our annual award for Tech Deal of the Year, as voted by corporate development executives in our recent survey. For the second straight year, the voting came down to a tight race between two transactions. For 2011, Google’s planned purchase of Motorola Mobility just edged [...]

AT&T’s loss is Verizon’s gain

Posted by on December 21, 2011

Contact: Ben Kolada In the land of multibillion-dollar telco mergers, sometimes the piecemeal approach is more effective than a one-and-done deal. AT&T attempted to leap over the competition with its proposed $39bn acquisition of T-Mobile USA; however, the world’s largest telecom company fell flat on its face. In failing to secure the T-Mobile takeover, AT&T [...]

Survey says: Tech M&A is likely to pick up in 2012

Posted by on December 19, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly After a summer of discontent, the environment for tech M&A in the coming year once again appears welcoming, according to 451 Research’s annual survey of corporate development executives. More than half of the company dealmakers we surveyed indicated they expected to be busier in the coming year than they had been in [...]

Proofpoint refills the IPO pipeline

Posted by on December 16, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly Wedged between the strong debuts this week of two tech companies, Proofpoint has put in its paperwork to refill the IPO pipeline. The subscription-based email security vendor filed for a rather small $50m offering, which is being led by Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. Earlier this week, Jive Software hit the market [...]

Lam’s novel move

Posted by on December 15, 2011

Contact: Thejeswi Venkatesh, Brenon Daly At a time when chipmakers are lowering their outlook, citing the economic downturn and the flooding in Thailand, semiconductor equipment maker Lam Research on Wednesday announced its plan to acquire Novellus Systems for $3.3bn in equity. The deal comes a little over a month after Novellus’ primary competitor and industry [...]

Europe: Not the lost continent

Posted by on December 15, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly Even as Europe appears increasingly likely to splinter under the weight of its unsustainable debt loads, there’s still a fair amount of shopping on the Continent. In fact, the $68bn worth of transatlantic transactions so far this year is the highest level in four years and equal to the combined value of [...]

Recent Blue Coat shareholders no longer in the red

Posted by on December 13, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly Anyone who bought shares of Blue Coat Systems over the past half-year breathed a sigh of relief after the recent buyout of the old-line security vendor. Thoma Bravo’s bid of $25.81 for each share means that buyers since May are all above water. (The offer represents a 48% premium over the previous [...]

A December rebound in tech M&A

Posted by on December 9, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly After three months of basically standing on the sidelines, tech dealmakers have stepped back into the market in a big way in December. During just the first week of the final month of 2011, the value of announced transactions across the globe hit $8.6bn, led by SAP’s announcement of the largest-ever SaaS [...]

The Houses of Morgan are in demand for on-demand work

Posted by on December 8, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly It turns out that the advisers for the largest-ever SaaS acquisition are also the busiest in terms of restocking the ranks of publicly traded subscription-based software companies. J.P. Morgan Securities, which banked SAP, and Morgan Stanley, which advised SuccessFactors, are upper left on the prospectuses of no fewer than five SaaS vendors [...]

Where to go after the sale?

Posted by on December 7, 2011

Contact: Brenon Daly, Thejeswi Venkatesh In an effort to bolster its Smart Grid offering, Siemens AG reached earlier this week for eMeter, a company that the German giant had invested in three years ago. The sale comes after San Mateo, California-based eMeter had looked to raise a round of funding last summer, on top of [...]

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