The news that Ashton-Tate Corp is going to Borland International Inc set one veteran to reminiscing about how Ashton-Tate, which has been shopped around for years, almost got sold to Lotus Development Corp back in 1985: the companies were within a hair’s breadth of releasing the story to the press but at the last minute the Ashton-Tate board bucked company chief Ed Esber out of the driver’s seat; supposedly the price was $11 a share, which our source remembered as then being awfully inflated.
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