Corum President Nat Burgess was quoted on WSJ's MarketWatch this weekend regarding "How to play the technology stock M&A wave": http://www.marketwatch.com/story/small-technology-stocks-are-ripe-for-takeover-2010-08-27. Excerpts:
Hewlett-Packard is offering $2 billion to buy a small data-management provider; Intel is paying close to $8 billion for a leading security software maker. Nowadays, Willie Sutton might be avoiding banks and investing in small technology companies ripe for a takeover, because that's where the money is...
Many tech titans are flush with cash...buying a smaller player is a good way to boost revenue..."When the economy falters, you don't just invest in technology, you buy as much as you can. And that ends up fueling more [M&A] activity," said Nat Burgess, president of Corum Group Ltd., a Bothell, Washington-based firm that advises technology companies on M&A deals.
Software firms likely will continue to be targets in the big guns' sights... Burgess points to... BMC Software Inc... BMC, with a market value of around $7 billion, is "small enough to buy, smart enough about building technologies that work easily with others, and big enough to move the needle" in a larger company's business. Burgess said that while there haven't been any indications BMC is shopping itself, the company is "one of the strongest, standalone software companies," and that its products would go well with offerings from the likes of IBM Corp. or Cisco Systems Inc.