Shareholders Love a Little Hostility

Nothing like a good hostile takeover to get shareholders in a buying mood. But, as we have seen with the slugfest with Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL  ) and PeopleSoft (Nasdaq: PSFT  ) , hostile takeovers can be a slog -- with no end in sight.

That's not always the case, however, especially with smaller deals. This may be so with Bel Fuse's (Nasdaq: BELFA  ) (Nasdaq: BELFB  ) hostile bid for Artesyn Technologies (Nasdaq: ATSN  ) . The deal has a value of roughly $400 million.

Bel Fuse designs, manufactures, and sells products for networking, telecom, and even consumer electronics. Last quarter, the company generated profits of $7.1 million on $48 million in sales. The company also has a war chest of $76 million in cash in the bank.

As for Artesyn, the company is a designer and manufacturer of power conversion and computing solutions for telecom and networking. You will find the company's products in high-end servers, routers, hubs, and other whiz-bang systems.

Last quarter, Artesyn posted sales of $105 million and net income of $3.1 million. The backlog was $97.1 million. Essentially, the company is benefiting from substantial demand from the wireless infrastructure industry. Interestingly enough, the company has $100 million in cash.

The irony is that it should be Artesyn that is buying Bel Fuse. Although, to gain some degree of leverage, Bel Fuse already purchased 5.2% of Artesyn's common shares.

It's up to the board of Artesyn to accept or reject -- and it is likely to reject based on valuation. But, by Bel Fuse making the volley, Artesyn is definitely in play, and this may encourage other possible suitors to the table.

Fool contributor Tom Taulli does not own any of the shares of the companies mentioned in the article.