mergers - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Timeline: The birth and death of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger

  In retrospect, it's not hard to see why AT&T thought its proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile would sail through with relatively few issues.

• RIM is so popular! Amazon, Microsoft, Nokia have all mulled buyout

  Separate reports Wednesday morning show that Research in Motion, despite being battered this year for everything from outages to late products to lost market share, hasn’t been without its admirers.

• FCC chief declares AT&T merger with T-Mobile a turkey

  US FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski, dropped an unwelcome Thanksgiving treat on AT&T's lap Tuesday by announcing he wants an administrative hearing on the carrier's plan to gobble up T-Mobile.

• Aussie businesses need to be prepared for merger and acquisition deals

  Once so-called ‘new technology’ companies are now playing an integral role in the ‘real economy’ and dominant technology sector players are taking a more aggressive approach to acquiring products, capacity and market share through merger and acquisition (M&A) activity.

• VMware and Google on an acquisition frenzy in 2011

  While the world has been distracted by HP's baffling $10.2 billion purchase of Autonomy and <a href="http://www.networkworld.com/subnets/microsoft/">Microsoft</a>'s surprising $9 billion buy of Skype, EMC/VMware and Google have been snapping up dozens of software companies throughout 2011.

• Check Point buys compliance technology vendor Dynasec

  Check Point Software is buying governance, risk management and compliance vendor Dynasec Ltd., which will add software that can help businesses comply with government regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley and health insurance portability and accountability act (<a href="http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/090911-hipaa-250659.html">HIPAA</a>).

• Red Hat raids cloud storage market by acquiring Gluster

  Red Hat announced Tuesday that it is acquiring Gluster, which makes open-source software that clusters commodity SATA drives and NAS systems into massively scalable pools of storage, in a cash deal valued at about $136 million. Gluster is also a contributor to the OpenStack cloud project and Red Hat is promising this involvement will continue. Indeed, Red Hat is now uncharacteristically saying its support of OpenStack will grow even beyond Gluster to the next release of Fedora.

• Cisco buys Microsoft Office collaboration company

  Cisco Monday announced that it has acquired privately held Versly, a maker of collaboration software for Microsoft Office applications.

• Shades of Blue reflected in HP's dramatic reshuffling

  HP's plans to get out of the PC business, acquire software maker Autonomy and retreat from its webOS device investments will, if all goes as planned, let the tech giant sharpen its focus on enterprise IT markets and capitalize on the software-centric strengths of CEO Leo Apotheker.

• HP's Apotheker changes his tune on mobility

  Six months after laying out his "strategic vision" for HP, CEO Leo Apotheker took the actions to realize it. And abandoned the mobile computing space.

• Google looks to protect Android with Motorola patents

  Google is paying a premium for Motorola Mobility, the recently spun-off device maker from Motorola proper. But for the $12.5 billion it's paying, Google likely is more interested in Motorola's patents than its phones.

• Google lashes out at patent trolls with Motorola buy

  Google is apparently sick of being pushed around by patent attorneys from Microsoft and Apple.

• Google CEO, Larry Page, blogs: Why we're buying Motorola Mobility

  In a company blog post up early this morning, Google CEO Larry Page lays out the rationale for his software company to pay $US12.5 billion for a leading maker of Android-based smartphones and tablets.

• Motorola Mobility is by far Google's biggest acquisition ever

  Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility is far and away Google's biggest-ever purchase -- in fact, it's greater than Google's next 10 biggest acquisitions combined and only its third above a billion dollars.

• Zeus Technology buys application firewall vendor Art of Defence

  Zeus Technology has bought application firewall vendor Art of Defence for an undisclosed amount and promises tighter integration with Zeus' application delivery controller.