SOURCE: Bloomberg
Technology companies that fueled more than $100 billion in acquisitions last year are likely to spend more in 2011 in a race to harness surging demand for cloud computing and security services.
Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and International Business Machines Corp. led purchases of more than 2,700 companies and still spent only a fraction of the cash piles they accumulated during the recession. The dollar amount of announced tech deals gained 12 percent, lagging behind a 26 percent jump in worldwide mergers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“I’m bullish” on 2011, said Larry Sonsini, chairman and co-founder of Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, the Palo Alto, California-based law firm that worked with security-software maker McAfee Inc. on its $7.7 billion agreed sale to Intel. “When I look at enterprise clients, I see they are poised to invest in growth on a global basis.”
