Timeline: How Dell and EMC’s $67 Billion Deal Came to Be
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One of the largest technology deals in history, between EMC and Dell, was announced on Monday, October 12, 2015. News of a possible merger or acquisition between the two enterprise-tech giants initially came as a surprise to many, but the companies have been searching for a way forward for quite some time. Here’s a look at how they got here.
2013
January: A Bloomberg report reveals that Dell has been in talks with two private-equity firms to be acquired. “My gut take is that this would be very, very difficult,” .
February: . The figure? $24.4 billion.
March: Activist investor Carl Icahn .
May: Icahn presses Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners , setting in motion a complicated, months-long fued.
September: Icahn .
October: Silver Lake in Dell.
2014
May: In an interview with Andy Serwer at Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference, Michael Dell acknowledged “strong cash flow” and a “growing” IT services business ()
August: Onstage at the company’s annual customer conference, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger says, “.”
October: Hewlett-Packard announces its split and , calling it “complex” and “distracting.”
November: One year after going private, than it was when it was public.
2015
April: redefining the company around the $1 trillion IT services market.
May: , a cloud computing software company, for $1.2 billion.
June: Fortune’s Barb Darrow questions EMC’s cloud strategy. “” she asks.
July: In an interview with Adam Lashinsky at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Silver Lake managing partner Egon Durban Later in the month, a report suggests that in an IPO. Meanwhile EMC CEO Joe Tucci rejects the idea of breaking up and , a Box and Dropbox competitor.
August: from investor Elliott Management without changing a thing. Reports suggest that . Two senior VMware executives . Paul Maritz, CEO of EMC Federation member Pivotal, .
September: A senior EMC executive at an industry event after a make-nice agreement with Elliott Management expires. “We really believe strongly that breaking up is the wrong thing to do,” he said. (For more, on EMC’s “federation” structure.)
October: EMC and Dell are making a deal. One week later, a Dell-EMC deal is , then . The resulting company is worth $67 billion.
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One of the largest technology deals in history, between EMC and Dell, was announced on Monday, October 12, 2015. News of a possible merger or acquisition between the two enterprise-tech giants initially came as a surprise to many, but the companies have been searching for a way forward for quite some time. Here’s a look at how they got here.
2013
January: A Bloomberg report reveals that Dell has been in talks with two private-equity firms to be acquired. “My gut take is that this would be very, very difficult,” .
February: . The figure? $24.4 billion.
