Over six million shares in Emeryville, California based Sybase Corp changed hands on Wall St Tuesday and stock price climbed sharply up to $26.25, finishing $26.50 Thursday: industry gossip suggests that a bid is in the offing; Lotus Development Corp, which already owns 17.5% of Sybase and which is believed to have tried to acquire the relational database company in September 1989 when it bought out Ashton-Tate’s stake, may be the culprit; fuel for this particular fire is that John Landry, Frank King’s replacement as number two in Lotus, joined last month after building up a close relationship with Sybase while technology supremo at Dun & Bradstreet Software of Framingham, Massachusetts; plus, Lotus is known to be keen to acquire database technology to firm up its client-server strategy in the face of competition from Borland and Microsoft; however, this isn’t as likely as first appears, because part of the terms of Lotus’ stake is that it is only allowed to own 25% of Sybase; also worth noting is that Apple is a shareholder in Sybase; usual suspect, Computer Associates, is as ever another possibility, as is Microsoft – Bill Gates is believed to be a private shareholder; what is most probable is that someone has leaked next quarter’s results, supposedly record level and in the $90m range, to an already bouncy Wall St, and that Sybase employees, just recently allowed to trade their shares, have been making hay while the financial sun briefly shines.
