Novell acquisition by Elliott
Economic News Today about Novell selling.The Elliott Associates offered Tuesday to buy Novell,
a business software maker, for $5.75 a share, according to our colleagues on the DealBook blog. But Wall Street expects the $2 billion offer to be raised — Novell’s shares rose as high as $6.07 in trading after the news was announced.Elliott also offered to buy Packeteer, another small Nasdaq-listed tech company it owned a large stake in, but it was eventually acquired by Blue Coat Systems in 2008. Another company Elliott went after was Epicor Software, but that bid was unsuccessful.
In 2006, Elliott was part of a group led by tech-focused private equity firm Francisco Partners that took bar-code scanner maker Metrologic private. Two years later, Honeywell acquired Metrologic for $720 million.
Novell seems to be the biggest tech company Elliott has gone after. What does the future hold for the company? Clearly, the market is expecting more, given that shares are trading today at $6.02, up nearly 27 percent. Elliott’s offer is for $5.75 per share, or about $2 billion. Expect a lot of back-and-forth on this one.
