Thursday, July 12, 2018

Weirdest. Acquisition. Ever. Broadcom buys CA Technologies -- The Register

I'm reminded of Larry Ellison's comment about Computer Associates, when it was busy acquiring faltering enterprise DBMS companies: "every ecosystem needs a scavenger" (see this 2007 Platformonomics post for context); on a related note, see China is winning the global tech race (Financial Times)
"This acquisition doesn’t offer any immediately obvious “commercial synergies” - overlaps that let the new management play The Hunger Games with engineers working on duplicate projects - but rather propels Broadcom into an entirely new market.

The two have this in common: their appetite for acquisitions (at its 2018 financial presentation CA highlighted its latest strategic buys, application security company Veracode and devops automation outfit Automic). Apart from that, enterprise software has nothing much in common than silicon chips.

The stock announcement doesn’t mention management arrangements, but it’s likely that CA will form the basis of a new business unit under Broadcom, since there’s no obvious division to roll it into."
Weirdest. Acquisition. Ever. Broadcom buys CA Technologies -- The Register

No comments: