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Technology
| Thu Oct 8, 2015 5:52am EDT
Dell in talks to buy data storage company EMC
By
Mike Stone
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Dell logos are seen
at its headquarters in Cyberjaya, outside Kuala Lumpur September
4, 2013.
Reuters/Bazuki
Muhammad
|
Dell Inc [DI.UL], the world's third largest personal computer maker,
is in talks to buy data storage company EMC Corp (EMC.N),
a person familiar with the matter said, in what could be one of the
biggest technology deals ever.
A deal could be an option for EMC, under pressure from activist investor
Elliott Management Corp to spin off majority-owned VMware Inc (VMW.N).
The terms being discussed were not known, but if the deal goes through it
would top Avago Technologies' (AVGO.O)
$37 billion offer for Broadcom (BRCM.O).
EMC has a market value of about $50 billion.
Dell is also in talks with banks to finance an all-cash offer for EMC, the
person told Reuters on condition of anonymity as the talks were
confidential.
Dell spokesman David Flink and EMC spokesman Dave Farmer declined to
comment.
A deal could further strengthen Dell's presence among corporate clients at
a time when founder Michael Dell has been trying to transform the company
he founded in 1984 into a complete provider of enterprise computing
services such as
Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N)
and IBM (IBM.N).
The talks come two years after Michael Dell and private-equity firm Silver
Lake took Dell private for $24.9 billion, ending its decades-long run as
one of the world's largest publicly traded PC makers.
ACTIVIST PRESSURE
Elliott, which has been pressuring EMC to spin off VMware, agreed in
January to refrain from agitating against EMC for eight months in exchange
for two directors backed by Elliott.
Reuters reported last week that Elliott plans to give EMC most of October
to respond to its demands after the standstill agreement expired, hoping
the extra time would give EMC more room to craft a response to avoid an
activist campaign.
"Of all the options potentially on the table, we would view a merger with
the now-private Dell as a nightmare scenario that would lack strategic
synergies and further complicate EMC's troubled growth path," said FBR
Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives.
While a deal would make a "ton of sense" for Dell, EMC/VMware holders
would still prefer a breakup of the antiquated federated model and split,
he said in a note.
EMC's so-called "federated business model" comprises its main data-storage
unit, enterprise security business RSA, cloud-computing software maker
Pivotal and VMware.
In August, Re/code reported that EMC was contemplating a takeover by
VMware. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that EMC was exploring
options and had held talks with Dell and HP.
(Reporting by Mike Stone in New York and Supriya Kurane and Aurindom
Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by
Ken Wills and Gopakumar Warrier) |
