Three days after rival Hewlett-Packard tendered a $24-per-share, $1.5 billion offer to acquire the enterprise storage maker 3PAR, Dell on Aug. 26 raised the stakes by about $100 million, upping its offer to $1.6 billion, or $24.30 a share. About five hours later, HP shot back, increasing its bid by nearly $300 million to
$1.8 billion — $200 million more than Dell’s last offer.
3PAR, located in Fremont, Calif., and employer of about 600 people,
originally made its reputation by delivering a scalable, dependable
thin-provisioning feature. It is a hot storage property because its
clustered, utility-type architecture is tailor-made for cloud systems
that deliver software as a service, and cloud storage systems are in
demand at this time.
Prior to the latest HP counter-offer, 3PAR had said its board of directors approved the proposal. 3PAR and Dell signed an amendment to their previously announced agreement of Aug. 16 reflecting the new offer price and a revised termination fee of $72 million.
3PAR Director of Media Relations John D’Avolio told CIO Insight sister publication eWEEK that the company
would have no comment on the bidding war at this time. HP’s offers are
unsolicited; Dell and 3PAR already have signed an agreement in
principle to execute the deal.
For more, read the eWeek article Dell Responds to HP by Upping its Offer for 3PAR by $100M.
