IBM-Sun Merger Appears Near

IBM-Sun Merger Appears Near
April 3, 2009
By Paul Shread

IBM's (NYSE: IBM) acquisition of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) could be announced Monday, according to news reports — and antitrust issues could be a big factor in getting the deal completed (see Sun Lays Off 1,500 as IBM Merger Looms and Sun Launches 'Open Cloud' as Merger Rumors Swirl).

The Wall Street Journal and other news sources say that after weeks of due diligence, IBM could pay between $9 and $10 a share for Sun. Sun reportedly agreed to take about 10 percent less than initially expected in exchange for IBM's commitment to persevere through any regulatory scrutiny the deal might face.

The combined company would have a dominant position in the Unix server market that could face antitrust review — and the two companies could face similar issues in mainframe tape and disk storage, according to Illuminata analyst John Webster.

The Justice Department in the mid-to-late 1990s raised objections to an IBM-StorageTek mainframe disk storage deal. Sun later acquired StorageTek.

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