Wall Street is determined that Lotus Development Corp is a takeover candidate and that Oracle Corp is ready for a big acquisition, and Lotus shares jumped $3.25 to $45.75 before slipping back a little as traders decided that an amalgamation was coming: the gossip was fuelled by the the absence of Lotus’s name from the list of presenters at a technology conference next week – the assumption being that as it had pulled out, something must be cooking, but Lotus squelched that one by pointing out that its name had appeared in error on the list of prospective attendees and that it had never planned to show.
