The laundry list of reasons for tech companies to buy is long. The rush to offer data center technologies, the recovering stock market, the prospect of improving corporate information technology spending, pressure on midtier companies -- all these factors have helped fuel a smattering of takeover speculation in the technology sector. Barron's did its part to feed the fire with its
latest cover story (subscription required).
The article points to 10 technology companies that Barron's views as takeover candidates, many of which have been the subject of previous M&A speculation. They include:
- Riverbed Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:RVBD),
- BMC Software Inc. (NASDAQ:BMC),
- F5 Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:FFIV),
- Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:BRCD),
- Juniper Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:JNPR),
- Red Hat Inc. (NYSE:RHT),
- Citrix Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CTRX),
- CommVault Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CVLT),
- 3Par Inc. (NYSE:PAR) and
- NetApp Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP)
Barron's argues that large tech companies are increasingly looking to M&A as a growth engine, as evidenced by Oracle Corp.'s (NASDAQ:ORCL) pending deal for Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA) and EMC Corp.'s (NYSE:EMC)
purchase of Data Domain. Companies like NetApp, which was left out in the cold after EMC outbid it for Data Domain, will have trouble competing with newly enlarged rivals, the article said.
- Olaf de Senerpont Domis
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