EMC raises Data Domain bid
Frantic fight with NetApp over de-dupe specialist.
By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service | Published: 15:50, 06 July 2009
The bidding war for Data Domain has become even more frantic. EMC has raised its offer for the storage vendor from US$1.8 billion to $2.1 billion in its latest effort to shove aside original bidder NetApp.
The all-cash offer is "clearly superior" to NetApp's $1.9 billion proposal, which includes stock and cash, EMC CEO Joe Tucci said in a letter to Data Domain's board that EMC publicly released. EMC is also ready to close the deal within two weeks, which is faster than NetApp, Tucci added.
NetApp had originally entered an acquisition agreement with Data Domain in late May, but EMC subsequently moved with counteroffers in an effort to squelch the deal.
Also on Monday, NetApp announced that it had cleared all necessary US regulatory hurdles to proceed with the acquisition.
Data Domain makes deduplication storage systems, which pinpoint redundant data and help companies save disk space. The company and NetApp could not immediately be reached Monday.
