Silicon Valley companies — big and small — are off on a shopping spree and if you are a start-up, that is really good news. First a rundown of some of the deals making news today.
- Symantec is said to be buying the security division of Verisign for about $1.3 billion.
- Yahoo bought Associated Content for rumored $90-to-$100 million.
- Priceline bought TravelJigsaw, a Manchester, UK-based global online car rental agency that offers its car rental services in 80 countries for an undisclosed amount of money.
- Playdom bought social game maker Acclaim for an undisclosed amount of money.
- Cisco bought design house Moto for an undisclosed amount of money
And if you look at some of the deals announced earlier, you know the M&A activity has been in full swing.
- HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion.
- SAP bought Sybase for $5.8 billion.
Last week Stacey pointed out the sudden spurt in acquisitions, especially in the cloud computing arena.
A focus on clouds, especially managing clouds in ways enterprise customers (GigaOM Pro, sub req’d) might want has led to several acquisitions so far this year on the part of big tech vendors like IBM, VMware and CA, all of which are looking to add new functionality in order to broaden their business. Hear more on these companies’ acquisitions strategies at our Structure 2010 conference June 23 and 24.
So what is going on? Why this sudden urge to buy? Well, for past 12 months or so, many large companies have been sitting on the sidelines, trying to get through what was arguably a heinous time in the economy by cutting costs and controlling margins. A typical (and safe) way to do this is by cutting workforce and eliminate projects that cost money.
However, as the economy has turned, many large companies are trying to find ways to add newer products and thus goose-up their business. Take for example Yahoo’s acquisition of content factory, Associated Content is an effort to cash in on the slowly but steadily growing demand for display advertising. This is a short term trade Yahoo is making in order to boost their advertising revenues.
I won’t be surprised if we see the drumbeat of deals get louder and louder. For start-ups that means one thing: good news.
Chart: Total Venture Backed M&A Deal Volume Through Q1 2010
This iChart shows the NVCA Q1 2010 release of the total venture backed mergers and acquisition (M&A) deal volume, together with the data of the past years – quarter view.
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