Platinum Technology’s president and CEO Andrew Filipowski decided to throw in the towel and sell the business to erstwhile rival Computer Associates in a cash purchase – the largest to date in the software industry – worth $3.5bn. Under terms of the deal, CA said it has made an offer to purchase all the outstanding shares of Platinum’s common stock, boosted by its recent acquisition of Memco Software, which also closed this week, for $29.25 per share. The merger, which has already been approved by both companies’ boards, will be funded by a $4.5bn loan to CAI from Credit Suisse First Boston.
Yahoo! Inc acquired web streaming audio and video broadcaster Broadcast.com in a stock and options swap valuing it at about $5.7bn. Broadcast.com’s market capitalization at the end of last Wednesday’s trading stood at $4.04bn. However, Dallas, Texas- based Broadcast’s stock has been boosted over the past couple of weeks since rumors of this deal started to spread, and options top up the rest of the valuation. Yahoo is banking on the explosion of broadband access both at work and at home. Yahoo chief operating officer Jeff Mallett notes that around half of all Yahoo’s traffic comes from the US corporate market, where broadband access is commonplace, but Mallet and Broadcast.com have their eye on an individual broadcasting platform, especially once the acquisition of GeoCities has closed and been integrated. Yahoo is issuing 0.7722 of Yahoo common stock for each of the 36.7 million shares of Broadcast’s stock, valuing it at $130 per share – a roughly 10% premium over Wednesday’s stock price, reflecting the extent to which details of the deal had already leaked out over the past few days.
Axent Technologies, the Washington-based security technology company, announced it had acquired UK-based security technology company, PassGo Technologies for around $50m. Axent is said to be interested in PassGo’s single sign-on (SSO) and password synchronization products because they are established in the mainframe environment, while the equivalent features in Axent’s technology are designed mainly for the client/server environment. Skinner said the company plans to integrate the two products to create a more global security product, but could not give a roll- out schedule.
Microgen Holdings, a UK company offering document management outsourcing services, announced it would pay up to 20.6m pounds ($33.5m) for Kaisha Technology, which specializes in business intelligence consultancy. The move is designed to accelerate Microgen’s activities in the business intelligence market, which is expected to grow by more than 30% a year in Europe and be worth 894m pounds ($1.46bn) by 2002.
