Corel soars, dives, finishes $583M ahead
...Nevertheless, as long as Red Hat has superior market value, it's in a strong position to acquire other firms. In last Friday's edition of Interactive Week Online, technology editor Charles Babcock made this point and noted that Corel is a possible takeover candidate.
"It's looking at the obvious," Mr. Babcock said yesterday in an interview. "No one at Red Hat suggested they were interested in Corel. No one at Corel suggested Red Hat was talking to them."
It's not clear that this article ignited the storm that blew Corel skyward yesterday. After all, Interactive Week posted the story on Friday morning, when presumably many U.S. investors were taking a long Thanksgiving weekend. The idea of a Red Hat takeover of Corel was also picked up yesterday by PC Week.
Whatever the true impetus of yesterday's share-price explosion, it seems there's little interest in a merger on the part of at least one Corel shareholder.
"I would be horrified if Red Hat bought Corel," said Jim Marshall, who owns several million dollars' worth of Corel stock.
"Why would you go for the dream when you can have the reality?" he asked, in reference to Red Hat's tiny revenue stream and Corel's more solid core of Linux developers.
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