The Garden City, New York-based Computer Associates International Inc and its creator, Charlie Wang, are hungry again, and the new target for acquisition is Fort Lee, New Jersey-based developer of utilities for the IBM Corp mainframe market, On-Line Software International Inc. On-Line, responding to an unusual movement in its share price, says that it is in discussions with Computer Associates that could lead to the latter acquiring all its outstanding shares. On-Line shares put on $1 to $10 on Friday before news of the talks broke, after having been steady at just below $10 for a month. The company emphasised that, although management of both firms have reached agreement at $15.75 per share, valuing On-Line at about $120m, the agreement remains subject to, among other typical conditions, approval of the boards of directors of On-Line Software and Computer Associates and the negotiation of definitive merger and other agreements and that there could be no assurance that a transaction of any sort will occur. On-Line Software bought the Ramis applications generator and UFO monitor from Martin-Marietta Corp in 1986. It did $4.6m on sales of $101.3m in the year to May 31.
