Friday Rant: Is Private Equity a Better Buyer of Software Companies Than Other Vendors?
Madison Dearborn’s recent Fieldglass buyout (here, here) provides further proof that today’s private equity firms might be better strategic — that’s right, strategic and not financial — buyers of software companies than software…
OpenPlug – Another Alcatel-Lucent Buy
Aclatel-Lucent is buying OpenPlug, which is a development suite that aims to make multi-platform development in the mobile space easier.
Intel & McAfee? Why Not GOOG & ADBE?
I don’t get the whole Intel buying McAfee thing. Sure, security looks like a good business. But Intel is a chip company. Yeah, microprocessors are mostly software down under, but that doesn’t mean Intel has the soul of a software company. Call me Old Fashioned, but I’m in the camp of thinking there needs to […]
Oracle M&A Watch: The On-line Poll
I had to be asked twice (first time I was on vacation), but this piece of link love is worth passing on. Stephen Jannise of Software Advice has created a graphical chart of the Oracle M&A binge of the last few years, starting of course with the PeopleSoft acquisition of 2003-2005 (yes, it took over […]
Consolidation in the Outsourcing and Consulting spaces
Image via Wikipedia Last week, I discussed the Booz & Co./A.T. Kearney merger that didn’t go through and why deals like that are sometimes problematic. This week, we learn that Hewitt is being acquired for $4.9 billion by AON. The Wall Street Journal reports that: – Deloitte LLP is looking for acquisitions – PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP […]
Hewitt into AON: a sad, bad day for HR Outsourcing
Waking up this morning to hear the news of Hewitt’s acquisition by AON signalled a sad, bad day for HR Outsourcing. The HRO industry is now consolidating faster than any of us imagined… forget ADP/Workscape, this is BIG – and leaves the global HRO market with three major global HRO enterprise-level providers – IBM, NGA and […]
Booz and Kearney & Why service mergers are tough
Image via Wikipedia Booz & Co. and A.T. Kearney, two well-known and long-established management consultancies danced with the idea of merging recently but have apparently called off the deal. In an article in the Wall Street Journal today and in another article by a U.K. publication, details as to the breakup are very limited. The […]
M&A Watch: Ariba and an Updated Shopping List for SAP in Procurement (Part 1)
The rumors have been heating up again these past few weeks that SAP is going to buy Ariba. These rumors come and go every few quarters, so I wouldn’t put that much more stock in them this time — at least not any more stock than in the past. But if they do prove to […]
Acquiring, everyone’s doing it – SAP Buying Sybase – Quick Analysis
SAP’s acquisition target was said to be a head-scratcher. Sybase certainly makes you cock your head a tad.
