The hiring post should say, "We have $9 billion cash on hand!" Word on the street is Dell Inc. (NASDAQ:DELL) is looking to hire an M&A chief, but dealmakers may be wary of the Round Rock, Texas, company's M&A track record.
The Wall Street Journal reported that two people briefed on the matter said
the No. 2 PC maker is interviewing investment bankers and tech industry veterans for the new position.
Dell needs some help with its acquisition strategy. CEO Michael Dell has said the company is
looking for acquisitions, but its last big deal was in late 2007 when it acquired storage vendor EqualLogic for $1.4 billion. There hasn't been much action as rivals such as Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) and IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM) are heating up
their dealmaking initiatives.
Dell's dealmaking reputation may make it pretty hard to find someone to take the chief of deals role. Reuters quoted one Silicon Valley banker who said they received feelers from Dell about the position as saying, "Joining Dell is basically as good as
saying goodbye to your M&A career."
Whoever it hires -- Dell is hush-hush about it as a rep said they couldn't comment on speculation -- one tech blogger had some suggestions for the new dealmaker on
what to buy, what not to buy and why. One buy suggestion included Sun Microsystems Inc.'s (NASDAQ:JAVA) hardware business, which some have speculated Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL)
could sell to a partner company. A don't buy suggestion included microblogging service Twitter Inc., which isn't core to what Dell does. -
Baz Hiralal Go to the storySilicon Valley banker says no wayWhat should Dell acquire?
Join Corporate Dealmaker's LinkedIn forum
Juergen Lasowski
And the winners are...
