HP Snaps Up 3PAR For $2 Billion

adeelarshad82 writes "The bidding war between HP and Dell has reached a swift and dramatic conclusion. One could even say HP sniped the auction at the last minute — to the tune of $2 billion for the acquisition of data storage provider 3PAR. HP's not-so-subtle efforts to pull the company away from a preliminary merger agreement with Dell — a $1.15-billion arrangement announced August 16 — took three successive bids to reach an ultimate conclusion. The final acquisition cost of $2 billion, confirmed by 3PAR late Friday, represents a price of $30 per share of 3PAR stock. That's triple the closing price of the company's stock before Dell's initial offer was made public, and more than double after."

Comments

Re:Why?

[funkatron]

They paid too much and were in a gambler's frame of mind.

Gambling addict's frame of mind. This kind of bidding war is really not the way to win at gambling.

Another News Item From Last Week

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot. is now Slashdot: News For Nerds Or Stuff You Can Read From CNN.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Bye.

Re:Another News Item From Last Week

[vlueboy]

Slashdot. is now Slashdot: News For Nerds Or Stuff You Can Read From CNN.

No problem. All newspapers repost the same news from Reuters, AP and EFE at about the same time, and many users complain when the one they subscribe to "leaves them in the dark" on grounds of bothersome redundancy for any news, and might leave to a more "all-encompassing," redundant-ish source. Slashdot is doing us a services, since we don't all read your same other sites and few IT admins ever block slashdot.

Wasn't slashdot a site meant to TALK about techish news with tech people? Our tech subscriber base is broader and better informed than you'll find on random non-specialized sites. We can post hacks, opinion on the recent wikileak and pr0n related stuff freely here; because it would otherwise leave broadcast a trail through your Facebook account on CNN. Hey, you just posted Anonymously! try THAT on CNN and any chan-free board these days! :)

Re:HP : Offshore, now coming to 3PAR

[vlm]

Expect anything that is run in the US or the First World to be offshored. Until HP goes back to the old "HP Way", of course.

They spun the "old HP" into Agilent in an IPO like 11 years ago. It's not coming back.

As opposed to if Dell bought them? I'm thinking it doesn't matter which one purchases it, everyone may as well pack their desks.

Could it be true that regardless of which company bought 3PAR, the same folks in India would get all the jobs?

Re:What the summary doesn't say:

[Lucas123]

Exactly. Nothing's changed from the numerous previous leap-frog bidding between HP and Dell for 3Par. Perhaps they should have people familiar with acquisition writing about them at PC Magazine.

Re:Why?

[vlm]

So obviously it isn't about the money, it's about the technology

Sometimes mergers happen to eliminate the competition. If you axe a $200M competitor, you can probably increase your revenues more than $200M because less competition means higher prices for everyone... Sure they're not going to ten-tuple, but its not going to take $2B/$200M = 10 years to pay for itself. Maybe, like 5 to 7 years?

Also, sometimes a merger means patents etc that a cheapy competitor couldn't afford to enforce, can now be cashed in.

Re:Why?

[bmwEnthusiast]

Perhaps there is a patent-folio that we are un-aware of that can crush all the little san mfg's. Just a thought...