Comments on: IBM-Sun Deal Collapses (but should it have ever gotten this far?)

By: Disruption in the Tech Sector: Oracle to Acquire Sun for $7.4 billion » Basex Blog »

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:26:26 +0000

[...] Oracle announced it will acquire Sun, a rival IT firm, for $9.50 per share, or ca. $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt. The announcement comes two weeks after IBM ended talks to acquire Sun. [...]

By: M.Arthur Ihle

M.Arthur Ihle — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 16:04:00 +0000

First, this smacks of the Time Warner-AOL merger and the advertised Microsoft-Yahoo merger. No one knows the value of Sun to IBM, Hewlett Packard, etc. The corporate culture of Sun will conflict with any potential large corporation and that is what gets in the way of synergies–along with poor financial analysis. Sun will be worth the price to remain competetive with IBM even if this deal collapses.

By: Steve Clapp

Steve Clapp — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:57:33 +0000

A Sun shareholder I am not, but I can imagine their fury (and ensuing wrath) if the reason the deal feel apart was a 1.5% reduction in the offer. More likely, IBM decided the anti-trust and culture integration headaches weren’t worth the potential upside and backed out.

By: David Cooper

David Cooper — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:51:44 +0000

Good summary and analysis. The next few days will be telling. From what I can see, Sun should have accepted IBM’s lower offer as it will probably be better than what they can get elsewhere. Once this went public, Sun became damaged goods.