Hedge fund offers $1bn for Novell

Well, here's another potential acquisition that might slip through IBM's hands. New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates sent a letter to the board of directors of Novell today after the market closed, offering the company $5.75 per share to take the company private. As Wall Street closed on Tuesday, Novell's shares ended …

[Brett Brennan 1]

It's a Windows World after all...

If Novell goes "private" in this manner, that will be the end of SuSE and anything else Novell has done constructive over the past decade. The parts of the company will surely be worth more, as you said, to an IBM or Oracle - especially if Oracle wants to kill a solid Linux competitor quickly.

The saddest irony is that, should this happen quickly, there is a chance that SCO might outlive Novell. I'm sure that SCO won't buy the patents they're missing, but there will be a bidding war between Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and maybe HP for them. MS has the deepest pockets...and we all know where that will end.

Just my conjecture. Hope I'm wrong.

[Sean Bergeron]

Not so much

Novell, LLC will probably still sell SuSE, etc. It's just that any big payoff from the lawsuits against SCO will hit the parent. What it does mean is that they'll probably kill a lot of their development activities. Sort of sad, but at the same time, this is often the fate of former giants who have perpetually-declining sales. One of the other big boys hasn't bought them, likely because of the price, and the regulatory scrutiny it'd attract. IBM and Oracle don't care. MS wouldn't sell GPL stuff. RedHat would make the most sense, but they likely don't have the capital. One interesting possibility would be Citrix......

[Tom Stone]

This would be a disaster for Novell

Hedge funds act like a bunch of sharks and will rip the company to shreds in order to squeeze value out of the acquisition. Novell needs good leadership but not a bunch of hungry animals trying to destroy the company. Unfortunately, I don't know if Novell can stop them.