AboutWelcome to Free Software Daily (FSD). FSD is a hub for news and articles by and for the free and open source community. FSD is a community driven site where members of the community submit and vote for the stories that they think are important and interesting to them. Click the "About" link to read more...
There's nothing like starting a technical conference, like Novell's BrainShare, off with a bang. Or, in this case telling Elliot Associates' unwelcome offer of not quite $2-billion for the company that Novell has no interest in selling out, not for that little anyway.
A hedge fund has offered to acquire Novell, developer of SUSE Linux, for $1.8 billion. Moments ago, Novell confirmed that it plans to review the unsolicited buyout offer. Now, Wall Street pundits wonder if folks like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle or SAP will step in and offer a higher bid for Novell.
Novell shares soared 28 percent in after-hours trading today after institutional stockholder Elliott Associates offered to purchase the entire company for $5.75 a share in cash, or $1 billion.
The hedge fund Elliott Associates said Tuesday afternoon that it had made an offer to buy Novell in a deal that valued the business software company at about $2 billion. Elliott said it would pay $5.75 a share in cash for Novell, a price that is 21 percent higher than Novell's closing stock price on Tuesday.
Novell (NOVL), the struggling software maker once among the computer industry's best known names, is trying to reclaim relevance through an embrace of open-source software and a détente with onetime rival Microsoft (MSFT). Now, having stemmed a multiyear revenue decline and beefed up its balance sheet, Novell plans to start acquiring smaller software companies in a quest for growth.
It's been a while in the coming but now Novell is finally being sold off. The company is to be bought by Attachmate for US$2.2 billion. For many the move is unsurprising: Novell has been on the back foot for some time now and its flirtation with Linux served only to delay its final end.
Novell today claimed to have more certified software partners than rival Linux providers. The chest pumping represents Novell’s latest thinly veiled attack against Red Hat. But take a closer look at Novell’s claims and you’ll see why Red Hat may take issue with some of Novell’s statements.