Dual track, but singular outcomes
Posted by Brenon Daly on July 21, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly For the third time in just two months, a tech company that had planned to go public has instead ended up inside a company that’s already public. The latest dual-track sale came Wednesday when Force10 Networks opted to accept a bid from Dell rather than see through its IPO plan. The networking [...]
Intel buys Fulcrum to further datacenter product push
Posted by admin on July 19, 2011
Contact: Thejeswi Venkatesh, Ben Kolada In a move that further boosts its 10-Gigabit Ethernet push, Intel has announced that it will acquire Fulcrum Microsystems, a fabless semiconductor company that developed the fully integrated FocalPoint family of 10Gb and 40Gb Ethernet switch chips. The acquisition advances Intel’s desire to transform itself into a comprehensive datacenter provider [...]
Flips and flops for PE shops
Posted by Brenon Daly on May 31, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly There are flips that fly, and flips that flop. Consider the two recent exits by private-equity (PE)-owned companies Skype Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor. One deal basically quadrupled the price of the portfolio company, while the other company is still lingering at a value of less than half its original purchase price. Granted, [...]
Taking chips off the table
Posted by Brenon Daly on May 5, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly A half-decade after financial buyers did their best to sweep up the semiconductor industry, it’s now the fellow corporate acquirers’ turn to continue the dealmaking. On Wednesday, Applied Materials Inc announced that it would hand over $4.9bn for Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates. The deal between the chip equipment makers comes on the [...]
TI-NatSemi: Large and analog
Posted by Brenon Daly on April 8, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly The fragmented market for makers of analog integrated circuits looks a whole less scattered now that Texas Instruments has reached for National Semiconductor. Already the largest analog vendor, TI will have some 17% of the market provided its $6.5bn all-cash offer for NatSemi closes later this year. (If it can’t close the [...]
Mentor Graphics’ ‘marginalized’ size
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 29, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly In knocking down Carl Icahn’s unsolicited bid, Mentor Graphics cited the regulatory difficulties that would likely accompany a combination with either of the two other large vendors of electronic design automation (EDA) software. However, the relative financial performances of the trio show the advantages of consolidation. As is true for most mature [...]
Mentor Graphic’s looming showdown
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 16, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly Lost in the din surrounding Carl Icahn’s recent effort to take out Lawson Software is the fact that the activist shareholder is already much further along with his stirrings against another target, Mentor Graphics. In less than two months, the electronic design automation company is slated to hold its annual shareholder meeting [...]
Slimmed-down LSI catches eyes on Wall Street
Posted by Brenon Daly on March 10, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly Wall Street’s vote on NetApp’s purchase of the Engenio division from LSI is pretty clear: the seller got the better end of the deal. On an otherwise tough day on the market Thursday, LSI shares were one of the rare spots of green on trading screens as investors backed the company’s move [...]
PE firms back at the table
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 25, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly The buyout barons might not be as powerful as they were before the Credit Crisis, but that doesn’t mean the financial buyers can’t elbow aside their rivals from the corporate world. Earlier this week, Golden Gate Capital topped an existing agreement that Conexant Systems had with fellow chipmaker Standard Microsystems. While it [...]
A public signoff from McAfee
Posted by Brenon Daly on February 8, 2011
Contact: Brenon Daly After nearly two decades in some form or another as a public company, McAfee all but certainly reported its quarterly results to Wall Street for the final time on Tuesday morning. The company’s sale to Intel is expected to close in the coming weeks, a deal that will bring the largest stand-alone [...]
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