Dubbed as the top tech merger of all time, Dell, together with MSD Partners and Silver Lake, will buy the data storage company EMC Corporation. Dell buying EMC according to some insiders is priced at around $67 billion or about $33.15 a share, thus making it the largest tech deal ever.
The said transaction is expected to close next year, between May and October. And with some anticipated changes, top company officials stated that no changes on other top executives are to be expected after the closing of deal. Joe Tucci, EMC's CEO, will still remain as chairman and CEO of EMC until its closing.
This merger is not a surprise move by Dell. Glenn O'Donnell, a Forrester Research analyst, stated that this merger would perfectly help in covering Dell's weak side, the storage. On his emailed statement via wired, O'Donnell stated that, "Dell is fairly weak on storage, and EMC will help give it a full portfolio that it needs to compete with HP, Cisco, IBM, and the growing threat from Huawei." This comment was also affirmed by Dell during a conference call stating that;
"The combination of Dell and EMC will create the industry leader" in the $2 trillion information technology markets where they have complementary portfolio technologies and other resources. This transaction also strengthens both companies in the increasingly competitive global marketplace."
This move of Dell would surely make a positive impact on the company especially on their run to be part of storage wars that is slowly being dominated by cloud storage. Dell's acquisition of EMC would drastically change their market share in storage and perhaps giving competitors more challenge. However, HP was not discouraged about merger of Dell and EMC, hence HP thought of it as "real opportunity" stating that;
"Two of our largest competitors are attempting a highly distracting, multi-year merger, just as we are launching two new, focused companies. The massive debt burden Dell and EMC are taking on undoubtedly means that they will have to radically reduce R&D, and integration inevitably will create disruption as they rationalize product portfolios, channel programs, and leadership."