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Strategies & Market Trends : Speculating in Takeover Targets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: richardred who wrote (2843)	9/9/2011 8:53:08 PM
From: ~digs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7242

*XRTX

To: richardred who wrote (2843)	9/15/2011 1:52:05 PM
From: richardred	Respond to of 7242

RE:Hitachi announced a deal to acquire U.S. data-storage company BlueArc Corp. for nearly $600 million to strengthen its information-technology business Hitachi Will Pursue Additional Alliances By JURO OSAWA TOKYO—Hitachi Ltd., facing increasing competition and scrambling to adapt to a new global reality, will continue to consider tie-ups or mergers in infrastructure-related businesses, the company's president said. "What Hitachi can do on its own is limited, so we have to pursue various alliances," President Hiroaki Nakanishi said Thursday, stressing that such alliances are "essential" for the Japanese technology conglomerate to compete globally. Last month, the Hitachi chief confirmed outside his house in the early morning a Nikkei report that said his company was in talks with Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Ltd. to possibly merge some major industrial businesses, such as electric power and railway machinery. Although the report stirred speculation over the possibility of integrating the management of the two companies, Mr. Nakanishi said Thursday that he had never discussed such a scenario with Mitsubishi Heavy. He added that the heads of the two companies have had "frank talks" about how to proceed. Hitachi will likely continue to explore alliances with Mitsubishi Heavy in specific operations, but such talks are possible with other companies too, Mr. Nakanishi said. Japanese companies offering infrastructure-related products and services face intensifying global competition, as newcomers offering lower prices increase their presence in the market. In electric-power businesses, for example, new rivals are emerging from South Korea, China and Russia, in addition to traditional U.S. and European competitors, Mr. Nakanishi said. "That's the reality of competition. It's a severe business environment," he said. Hitachi, one of Japan's biggest companies with ¥9.316 trillion ($121.59 billion) in revenue in the fiscal year ended in March, has been restructuring its operations by distancing itself from volatile businesses such as electronic devices and focusing more on technology services and infrastructure projects. Last week, Hitachi announced a deal to acquire U.S. data-storage company BlueArc Corp. for nearly $600 million to strengthen its information-technology business. In March, the company agreed to sell its hard-disk-drive business to Western Digital Corp. of the U.S. for $4.3 billion. One of the areas Hitachi is trying to strengthen is power transmission and distribution. The company is considering mergers and acquisitions in that field, Mr. Nakanishi said. In May, rival Toshiba Corp. announced a $2.3 billion deal to acquire Landis + Gyr, a Swiss maker of advanced meters used in highly efficient power-distribution systems. Among power-related businesses, the nuclear-energy sector faces challenges after the disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi power plant. As a supplier of one of the reactors there, Hitachi is involved in Japan's efforts to bring the plant to a more stable condition. Despite the Fukushima crisis, Hitachi's overseas clients in the nuclear-power business haven't made any drastic changes to their plans so far, Mr. Nakanishi said. For many countries, nuclear power remains important as a way of securing a stable source of energy, he added. "Quitting nuclear-power operations is not an option, for at least another 100 years," he said, referring to the life cycle of a nuclear plant from the initial planning and construction to decades of operation and eventual decommission. For Hitachi and other Japanese companies seeking to enhance their global presence, the yen's relentless strength makes them less competitive against overseas rivals, even though a strong yen helps when Japanese companies make overseas acquisitions. Mr. Nakanishi said Hitachi has already been taking steps to mitigate the currency impact by increasing overseas procurement of raw materials and through other measures. As the company is already making efforts, "it would be difficult for us to speed up our efforts" to cope with the strong yen, he said. Read more: online.wsj.com

To: richardred who wrote (2843)	10/5/2011 12:18:31 AM
From: richardred	Respond to of 7242

We now have this thing called the Cloud. A Cloud back when these two were last together (IBM/XTRX )was something in the Big Blue sky. What say you Big Blue. IBM Plans Software Acquisitions to Boost Revenue By $20 Billion By 2015 Senior Vice President Steve Mills says IBM is planning more acquisitions in order to fuel growth in its $22.5 billion software business. Hot Feature: Preview: Apple’s “Let’s Talk iPhone” Event Last week, IBM surpassed Microsoft to become the world’s second-most valuable technology company, after Apple . The company now plans to spend between $100 million to $300 million on targeted acquisitions in order to boost annual revenue by $20 billion by 2015 as its sets its sights on Apple’s number one spot. CEO Sam Palmisano says the company aims to double or triple the pace of sales growth at the companies it acquires, and will look for deals that will be accretive to earnings within two or three years. IBM took in $99.9 billion in revenue last year, when its software unit had gross margins of 86.9%. The company has made nearly 50 software acquisitions since 2006, more than half of which have been in business-data analysis, on which IBM has spent $14 billion over the last five years. IBM expects its business-analytics products to yield $16 billion in sales by 2015. The company is likely to make smaller acquisitions, worth less than $10 billion, according to Joel Achramowicz, an analyst at Blaylock Robert Van LLC, an investment bank in Oakland, California. He added that IBM is “making the right acquisitions at the right time.” However, he dropped coverage of IBM back in April, partly because of their unwillingness to make large acquisitions. “That’s one of the reasons we got kind of bored with the stock,” he said. “There are some big software companies out there, which could augment IBM’s position.” In terms of the existing business, “IBM’s done about everything it can to maximize their operating model,” said Achramowicz. Don’t Miss: Bernanke: Fed Prepared to Take Further Steps to Boost Growth IBM’s strategy is to look for deals that can augment products it already owns. When the company bought statistical-analysis software company SPSS Inc. for $1.2 billion in 2009, it was to complement the 2007 acquisition of Cognos Inc. , whose software creates executive “dashboards” for quickly perusing business data. The former lends the latter more robust statistics capabilities, while the latter lends the former its ability to visually depict data, which has helped accelerate SPSS’s growth since its purchase, said Mills. finance.yahoo.com