3Par, the data-storage company is the subject of a billion-dollar bidding-war between HP and Dell.
HP has offered $24 a share, or roughly $1.6 billion, a substantial improvement of Dell’s bid of $18, which equates to roughly $1.15 billion.
Before the opening bell on Wall Street today, 3Par’s share price jumped 36% to $24.60 premarket, while Dell rose 0.3% to $12.10 and H-P slid 1% to $39.45.
The move comes at a time of considerable activity in the tech sector, with cash reserves at an all-time high and a struggling market.
HP and Dell are both looking to gain a bigger share of corporate spending in the data-utility sector, with revenues from personal computer sales, both companies main business, falling.
Data centres are seen as a potential growth industry as budgets are gradually returning to corporate expenditure.
For those of you wondering “who are 3Par?”, the company was founded in 1999, they build high-end systems that help companies store and manage their data more efficiently, using what are known as virtualization technologies.
It competes with products from data-storage giant EMC Corp., Japan’s Hitachi Ltd., as well as HP and International Business Machines Corp.
Waging an external bidding war seems like an odd move for both companies, as they are both involved in internal battles.
Earlier this month, HP said CEO Mark Hurd would be stepping down, following sexual harassment claims against him and the company. HP’s chief financial officer Cathie Lesjak is serving as interim CEO but the company has made no mention yet about its CEO succession plans.
Meanwhile, a sizeable number of Dell investors showed their disdain for CEO and company founder Michael Dell by withholding their support for him at the company’s recent shareholder meeting. That meeting took place just weeks after the computer maker settled a fraud case with the Securites and Exchange Commission.
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