Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Intel acquired McAfee. Could Symantec be next?

Last thursday, Intel Corporation has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire McAfee, through the purchase of all of the company's common stock at $48 per share in cash, for approximately $7.68 billion.
Symantec the Mountain View, California-based security company that has been facing speculation it could be a target, can add Cisco Systems to its list of potential suitors, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The report cited Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS Investment Research, who said some of the big tech companies including Cisco could move to try and buy Symantec in light of Intel’s bid for McAfee. A previous report named Oracle, HP and IBM as potential suitors for Symantec. Symantec has a market capitalization of $ 10.9 billion.

We believe the McAfee acquisition should drive interest back into other software acquisitions targets in addition to many software deals you have been reading on The Akbas Post. For security software specifically, the Intel-McAfee deal does not necessarily spark renewed interest in the group. Intel is not

immediately competitive with others building out data center footprints, like HP, IBM, Oracle. Hence, we’d expect these companies to prefer a partnership route with larger vendors such as Symantec, rather than an acquisition. If they were to become more interested in security, Check Point Software would have to be on the list. However we’d expect the Intel move is more focused on system security, where Check Point Software does not have a strong position.

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