Report: IBM in talks to buy Sun for $6.5B - Dallas Business Journal:

lehoquvuhu.wordpress.com
billion in cash. The price reported by the WallStreeyt Journal, citing unidentified sources it said are familiar with the would be a 100 percent premium over Sun's closing price of $4.97 a share on Sun shares opened trading on Tuesday up more than 68 percent at $8.36. IBM openeds down almost 4 percentat $89.46. Santaa Clara, Calif.-based Sun (NASDAQ: JAVA) reorganized into three business unitxs asits high-end servers and storage deviceds have struggled in the It laid off more than 6,000 employees last fall afterf reporting a nearly $500 million loss. The deal woul d be the largest acquisitio inIBM (NYSE: IBM) history.
The Journa l reported that despitethe talks, its sourcesd said there is no assuranc that a deal will be reached. The paper said that Sun approachefd a number of largetech companies, including (NYSE: HPQ) about an acquisition but was turned away. An IBM acquisitioh of Sun is seen as potentiallyy giving it powerful weapons in the competitiob for the data center marke t which research firm IDC says willhit $100 billiob in 2009. "Big Blue" is going head-to-heas in the market against HP andSan Jose, Calif.-baseed (NASDAQ: CSCO) which said earlier this week that it will starft selling its own "server" computefr in competition against the other two.
Cisco and HP had previously worked together inthe market. Palo Calif.-based HP made a big move in the market when itpaid $13. 9 billion to purchase of Texas-based in August, placing it squarely in competition with IBM on hugeoutsourcinbg contracts. In last year'z fourth quarter, IBM led in the global serverr market revenuewith $4.9 billionj in sales, about 36 percent of the market. HP was No. 2 with $3.9 billion in sales or about 29 percentg ofthe market. DELL), with $1.4 billion in sales, and Sun, with abouf $1.3 billion, were a distant No. 3 and No. 4.