After an anxious summer, EMC’s bid for storage software firm Legato Systems has finally been completed. Under the terms of the deal, Legato shareholders will receive 0.9 cents per share of EMC common stock for each share of Legato common stock, valuing Legato at US$1.3bn.
The acquisition was thrown off track in July when a group of Legato shareholders filed lawsuits alleging that Legato’s board of directors timed the announcement of the acquisition to shed a positive light on the bid by EMC and to potentially increase their own income rather than protect the interests of shareholders.
This was all forgotten yesterday when Joe Tucci, EMC’s president and CEO, announced the closure of the deal. “We are thrilled with the speed and efficiency at which we closed this transaction,” he said. “The synergies between EMC and Legato’s products, distribution, people and culture have accelerated our ability to create the ultimate information lifecycle management company.”
The Legato Software division of EMC will be led by David B Wright, Legato’s former CEO, who will report to Tucci as an executive vice-president of EMC and president of the Legato Software division. Said Wright: “Throughout the integration process we have been working closely together to ensure that EMC and Legato customers, partners, products, and people benefit from this union. I have enormous confidence in our ability to achieve our goals and deliver increased value to customers.”
EMC, the world’s largest dedicated storage systems vendor, established a presence in Ireland in 1988 with its first manufacturing facility outside of North America in Ovens, Cork. It then formed its Dublin based sales office in 1990. EMC now employs over 1,100 people in Ireland between both sites.
In a related development, EMC last week acquired the US software house Documentum for US$1.7bn in stock. The deal is seen as adding to EMC’s expertise in the area of information lifecycle management. According to the analyst firm Gartner, Documentum’s background in enterprise content management is expected to bolster EMC’s offering in this space and dovetail with Legato’s strengths in data protection, storage management and email archiving.
By Brian Skelly
