MESSAGE
| DATE | 2010-11-22 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] "Novell also plans to sell some intellectual
|
On Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 04:32:55PM -0500, swd wrote:
> The end if openSuse?...
>
> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/novell-to-be-sold-for-2-2-billion/?hp
> w
>
> November 22, 2010, 8:56 am
> Novell Being Acquired for $2.2 Billion
> By EVELYN M. RUSLI
Very interesting. Most interesting is that microsoft wished to purchase
SuSE :(
BTW - what happened to that delivery you wanted to make?
Ruben
>
> 9:58 a.m. | Updated
> Novell, the software maker, said on Monday that it had agreed to be acquired
> by the Attachmate Corporation for $2.2 billion in cash.
>
> Novell also plans to sell some intellectual property assets for $450 million
> to a consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft. Attachmate's
> takeover is contingent on the successful closing of the sale.
>
> Novell, a company that specializes in enterprise infrastructure software,
> will add to Attachmate's portfolio of software brands, which includes its
> namesake line and NetIQ (acquired in 2006). Attachmate has effectively
> served as an acquisition vehicle, led by a trio of private equity firms:
> Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. In 2005, the
> investment team purchased Attachmate for an undisclosed sum and immediately
> merged it with an earlier buyout, WRQ.
>
> The offer of $6.10 a share represents a premium of 28 percent above Novell's
> closing share price on March 2, Novell said in its statement. That is when
> the hedge fund Elliott Associates said said it had offered to buy the
> company for $5.75 a share, or $2 billion - an offer that the board of Novell
> rejected as "inadequate."
> Under this new deal, Elliott will stay on as an equity shareholder of
> Attachmate, according to the news release.
> The offer is a 9.1 percent premium from Novell's closing stock price on
> Friday.
>
> Although the deal represents a premium for Novell shareholders, some
> analysts say the transaction highlights the challenge of putting a sprawling
> company like Novell on the auction block. The Novell deal stands in contrast
> to the rest of the technology sector, which has had a wave of mergers and
> acquisitions this year, often at rich premiums, Richard Williams, an analyst
> for Cross Research, said. The value of third quarter deals rose 48 percent
> from the year-ago period, according to a recent report by Ernst & Young.
>
> "I'm surprised the deal got done," Mark Schappel, a Benchmark Capital senior
> software analyst said. "Novell is a very difficult deal to get done, there's
> a lot of moving parts."
> Even though a lot of players were in the market, none of them wanted all of
> Novell, he said.
>
> Founded in 1983, Novell rose to prominence for its network operating system,
> Netware. However, in the mid-1990s, the company started to make acquisitions
> to become more competitive in the enterprise space, picking up companies
> like Cambridge Technology Partners, Unix System, SilverStream Software ,
> Ximian and SUSE, a linux-based operating system business.
>
> After its shopping spree, Novell emerged as a Frankenstein-like company,
> featuring pseudo-integrated limbs and a cloudy vision, Mr. Schappel said.
> Thus, when the company started to explore its options this year, there were
> several buyers for parts of the business but few for the whole.
>
> Although its SUSE business only broke even earlier this year, the high
> growth segment was widely considered the unofficial crown jewel of the
> company's portfolio. In the last few months, there was heated speculation
> that Novell was on the brink of selling SUSE to VMWare and selling the rest
> of the company to Attachmate. According to Mr. Schappel, several players
> beyond VMWare, like Red Hat and Microsoft, were interested in buying SUSE,
> but because Novell's businesses are tied together, when SUSE is stripped out
> of the equation the rest of Novell seems less valuable.
>
> "The more interesting part of this whole discussion is: "What happened to
> all the strategic buyers who we understood were part of the bidding
> process?" Richard Williams, an analyst for Cross Research said. "There's a
> lot of information in the current price and that it's only 35 cents above
> the bid by Elliott Associates."
>
> JPMorgan Chase is advising Novell, while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &
> Flom is acting as legal adviser. Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets are
> advising Attachmate, and Jones Day is its legal adviser.
>
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