Tech M&A

Cisco Announces Definitive Agreement to Acquire PostPath

Allen — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 03:27:16 +0000

SAN JOSE, Calif. - August 27, 2008 - Building upon its commitment to provide a comprehensive collaboration portfolio, Cisco today announced its intent to acquire privately held PostPath, Inc., a provider of innovative email and calendaring software. Based in Mountain View, Calif. with additional development operations in Sofia, Bulgaria, PostPath will enhance the existing email and calendaring capabilities of Cisco’s WebEx Connect collaboration platform.
(full press release)

Cisco - http://www.cisco.com/
PostPath - http://www.postpath.com/

IBM buys French software company, Ilog

Allen — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 05:29:52 +0000

ARMONK, NY & PARIS - 28 Jul 2008: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and ILOG (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364) today announced they have signed an agreement regarding a proposed acquisition by IBM of ILOG to be implemented by way of concurrent cash public tender offers in both France and the United States. Through this proposed transaction, IBM will combine its business process management (BPM), business optimization, and service oriented architecture (SOA) technologies with ILOG’s Business Rules Management Systems software. This will enable IBM to help clients deliver critical business information in real-time, allowing them to make better business decisions faster.

(full press release…)

IBM - http://www.ibm.com/
Ilog - http://www.ilog.com/

Microsoft buys Powerset

Allen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:43:43 +0000

From Live Search’s official blog:

We’re excited to announce that we’ve reached an agreement to acquire Powerset, a San Francisco-based search and natural language company.

Powerset will join our core Search Relevance team, remaining intact in San Francisco. Powerset brings with it natural language technology that nicely complements other natural language processing technologies we have in Microsoft Research.

More importantly, Powerset brings to Live Search a set of talented engineers and computational linguists in downtown San Francisco. This is a great team with a wide range of experience from other search engines and research organizations like PARC (formerly Xerox PARC).

(read more…)

Microsoft Announces Acquisition of Navic Networks

Allen — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:38:42 +0000

REDMOND, Wash. — June 17, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the acquisition of Navic Networks, a leading provider of television advertising solutions. Navic’s technologies include sophisticated campaign management tools that use relevant data to optimize the delivery and placement of targeted interactive television media and through Admira provide a unified ad network for targeting audiences across television advertising inventory. With the addition of Navic solutions, Microsoft’s comprehensive advertising platform will be able to facilitate enhanced digital advertising across online and offline environments.
(full press release…)

Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Navic Networks - http://www.navic.tv/

Not a tech M&A but… CBS is buying CNET

Allen — Thu, 15 May 2008 03:44:44 +0000

This is more a media M&A but I’m including it here because CNET covers the technology industry…

NEW YORK and SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 — CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS) has entered into an agreement to acquire CNET Networks, Inc. (Nasdaq: CNET), it was announced today by Leslie Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation. Under the terms of the agreement, CBS will make a cash tender offer for all issued and outstanding shares of CNET Networks for $11.50 per share, representing an equity value of approximately $1.8 billion. The acquisition will make CBS one of the 10 most popular Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique users per month, and approximately 200 million users worldwide.
(full press release)

CBS - http://www.cbscorporation.com/
CNET - http://www.cnet.com/

Updated: See coverage on TechCrunch:
- CNET CEO: “This Is An Exciting Day For Us”
- Why CBS Bought CNET, And Not The Other Way Around

Confirmed: HP is buying EDS

Allen — Tue, 13 May 2008 13:22:52 +0000

PALO ALTO, Calif., and PLANO, Texas, May 13, 2008 — HP and EDS today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase EDS at a price of $25.00 per share, or an enterprise value of approximately $13.9 billion. The terms of the transaction have been unanimously approved by the HP and EDS boards of directors.

The transaction is expected to close in the second half of calendar year 2008 and to more than double HP’s services revenue, which amounted to $16.6 billion in fiscal 2007. The companies’ collective services businesses, as of the end of each company’s 2007 fiscal year, had annual revenues of more than $38 billion and 210,000 employees, doing business in more than 80 countries.
(official press release)

HP - http://www.hp.com/
EDS - http://www.eds.com/

HP is said to be buying EDS

Allen — Tue, 13 May 2008 02:11:35 +0000

According to a NYTimes.com article, HP is offering to buy EDS for $12.6 billion in cash. HP is clearly trying to catch up to IBM in the game of IT services for large corporations, an area where IBM certainly has a commanding lead. A combination would lead to some serious integration issues. The two companies today have over 310,000 employees together. However, in trying to move further away from the PC business, this could make sense for HP. We’ll see where it leads to…

Microsoft withdraws its offer to buy Yahoo! Is it the end of all this?

Allen — Sun, 04 May 2008 06:04:04 +0000

After not being able to reach an agreement on the price and other terms, the negotiation fell apart and Microsoft is now withdrawing its offer to buy Yahoo! (Reportedly, Microsoft’s final offer was $33 a share while Yahoo wanted at least $37.) See Microsoft’s official press release here. Yahoo’s official response is here.

Personally this is the outcome that I’ve wanted to see the most — Microsoft leaves Yahoo alone and Yahoo can remain an independent company. However, this is probably not the end of all this. Yahoo’s share price is sure to drop comes Monday. Microsoft can either buy them in the open market or makes another (and lower) offer later on. I, for one, have never really seen why Microsoft really needs Yahoo or Yahoo is better off with them. But a lot of people seem to think so and it’s hard to imagine that Microsoft is walking away this easily…

Let’s wait and see what happens… Now the acquisition threat is gone (temporarily), would Yahoo still outsource search advertising to Google? Will Microsoft come back with another offer later on? Boy, the suspense….

Updated: NYTimes.com’s Dealbook has a very good chronology here.

Microsoft Acquires Farecast For $115M

Allen — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:20:25 +0000

See the official announcement on Farecast’s blog. (No official press release from Microsoft though.)

AOL Acquires Sphere

Allen — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:10:44 +0000

New York, NY, April 15, 2008 – AOL today announced that it has acquired Sphere Source, Inc., a leading provider of contextual-search tools which offers related content to publishers. Sphere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL as part of the company’s Programming division, which is led by Executive Vice President Bill Wilson.
(full press release)

AOL - htto://www.aol.com/
Sphere - http://www.sphere.com/