Watch stocks you care about
The single, easiest way to keep track of all the stocks that matter...
Your own personalized stock watchlist!
It's a 100% FREE Motley Fool service...
These guys would be better off with a clean break-up. "Let's just be friends" is just too awkward for everybody involved.
EMC's (NYSE: EMC ) tender offer for storage efficiency expert Data Domain (Nasdaq: DDUP ) was set to expire today, so the company filed an extension until July 10. Data Domain will hold its annual shareholders' meeting in the meantime. And none of it matters.
As of last Friday, with an already-extended deadline looming large, only 0.28% of Data Duplication's shares had been tendered to EMC's offer. That's tantamount to a vote of "no confidence" in the deal.
To put that tiny number into perspective, consider that Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS ) at one point had support from about 15% of the Take-Two Interactive (Nasdaq: TTWO ) shares in its efforts to take over the smaller video game production house. Nice, but not enough -- that merger never happened. And that was with just about 50 times the shareholder support EMC's current offer is enjoying.
Put another way, it looks like Data Domain's owners prefer to see the competing NetApp (Nasdaq: NTAP ) offer coming to fruition. That's also what I expect to happen in the end -- Data Domain sets a date for a shareholder vote, gets the approval, and then becomes a very important part of NetApp's hopes and plans for the future.
EMC would have to cough up more cash to win this battle. Even then, EMC might have to resort to downright hostilities if it really wants Data Domain, similar to the acrimonious proxy fight brewing in Broadcom's (Nasdaq: BRCM ) buyout proposal to Emulex (NYSE: ELX ) . That's just not a healthy way to get hitched, unless you want to start planning the divorce party already.
Further Foolishness:
RSS Headlines
Fool UK
Comments from our Foolish Readers
Help us keep this a respectfully Foolish area! This is a place for our readers to discuss, debate, and learn more about the Foolish investing topic you read about above. Help us keep it clean and safe. If you believe a comment is abusive or otherwise violates our Fool's Rules, please report it via the
Report this Comment icon found on every comment.
Be the first one to comment on this article.