A (belated) Oscar for IBM
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 8, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
We hand out our version of the Oscar every year in late December. (Like the movie industry award, our Golden Tombstone is voted on by folks in the industry, which, in this case, are fellow corporate development executives.) Last year, Oracle’s drawn-out acquisition of Sun Microsystems took the top [...]
Next to nothing for Novell
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 4, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
As bargains go, Novell’s valuation in the recently floated bid from a hedge fund is a bit like a ‘crazy Eddie’ discount. Earlier this week, Elliott Associates offered $5.75 for each of the roughly 350,000 shares for Novell. Altogether, the equity value totals about $2bn.
But the true cost of Novell [...]
Taps turned off at Liquid Computing
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 3, 2010
Contact: John Abbott
It looks like Liquid Computing will be the latest hardware startup to shut down due to a lack of funding. The former high-performance computing vendor, founded in 2003, had raised $50m of VC funding over three rounds. Its C round of $8.3m closed as recently as last summer, and was [...]
SGI: buying low and heading higher
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 2, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
For any company looking to be acquired by Silicon Graphics, we have this rather unorthodox suggestion for how to position the business: declare bankruptcy. We’re kidding – but only a bit. In just the past 10 months, SGI has picked up two companies in wind-down sales. Last April, server vendor [...]
A Coremetrics sale to salesforce.com?
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 26, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
Could this be a case of history repeating itself? A Web analytics vendor pulls out at the last minute of a technology conference at a boutique bank, and then announces that it has agreed to a richly priced sale of the company. That’s the way it played out last [...]
Blue-light special on Brocade
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 25, 2010
by Brenon Daly
For all of the would-be suitors of Brocade Communications, now is seemingly the time to move on the enterprise networking vendor. The value of the company has been trimmed by about one-quarter this week, meaning that a buyer paying a typical premium would be getting Brocade for the price that [...]
No-go IPO for RedPrairie
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 23, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
Scratch another name off the list of IPO candidates. RedPrairie, which had filed to go public in late November, instead sold on Tuesday to buyout shop New Mountain Capital. The sale moves the supply chain management software vendor from one private equity portfolio to another. (We understand that the [...]
A Mimosa-colored Iron Mountain
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 22, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
Adding a major piece to its information management portfolio, Iron Mountain said Monday that it will hand over $112m in cash for Mimosa Systems. (We noted two weeks ago that the market was buzzing on this possible pairing.) The purchase is the largest by Iron Mountain since its October [...]
QlikTech looks likely to click on the market
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 19, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
Even though the public market has been fairly choppy lately, there seems to be no shortage of companies willing to step into the uncertain waters. We’ve seen a number of recent IPO filings, as companies get their final 2009 numbers in order and look ahead to a possible summer offering. [...]
Will Google land On2?
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 17, 2010
Contact: Brenon Daly
At this rate, Google may never again go shopping on the public market. Its contentious reach for On2 Technologies, which has been bogged down for a half-year, will come to some kind of resolution after the close of the market today, with shareholders of the video compression software vendor [...]