Last week a winner emerged for the bidding war of Data Domain Inc.  EMC agreed to buy Data Domain for $33.50 per share which ended a bidding war with NetApp.  Data Domain paid a $57 million termination fee under the tems of agreement with NetApp after they cancelled a merger deal.

Through the acquisition, EMC will be challenging Hewlett-Packard.  Hewlett-Packard may even make an offer to buy out NetApp, the loser of the bidding war.  NetApp said that they gave up on Data Domain because they would not be able to justify the escalated bid to shareholders.

The total amount for EMC’s acquisition was $2.1 billion in cash.  NetApp went as high as $1.9 billion.

[via Bloomberg]

Someone just buy Data Domain already!  First EMC was looking to buy DataDomain and then NetApp quickly made a bid to buy the company first at a price of $1.5 billion.  And then EMC offered $1.8 billion in cash.  NetApp matched the $1.8 billion offer and DataDomain decided to go with that offer.

EMC has come up with another offer, $33.50 per share based on 62.9 million shares outstanding in cash amounting to $2.1 billion.  EMC would also remove a breakup fee from its offer for Data Domain and was prepared to complete a deal within the next two weeks.

Last month EMC even created a full page ad in The San Jose Mercury Times in an attempt to persuade Data Domain employees that they would be better off under the EMC umbrella instead of NetApp.

[via DealBook]

NetApp and EMC Corporation both want Data Domain pretty badly.  A couple of days ago, EMC outbid NetApp for Data Domain by a couple hundred million dollars.  NetApp today announced that they have submitted another bid at $30 per share ($1.8 billion).  NetApp’s previous offer was $25 per share ($1.5 billion total).

EMC’s offer is $30 per share as well.  However EMC claims that their deal is better because it is not subject to the same limits and conditions as NetApp’s deal.  EMC said that they want to buy Data Domain because of their strong management and sales teams to back up their own storage team.

NetApp’s offer is subject to closing in 60-110 days and EMC’s offer will expire on June 29, unless there is an extension.  Regardless of who picks up the company, Data Domain is in a pretty good position as of right now.

[via CNET]

EMC Corporation is one of the biggest server storage companies in the world with a market cap of about $25 billion.  Data Domain offers similar services but at a much smaller scale.  Last week NetApp made a bid to buy out Data Domain for $1.5 billion in cash and stock.  EMC one upped NetApp by offering $1.8 billion in cash today.

Data Domain’s stock is trading at about $26.35, giving the company a market cap of $1.61 billion.  EMC made a bid for Data Domain after the stock market closed.  After the bid announcement, Data Domain’s stock price surged to above $30 during after hours trading.

“Strategically, this combination will further enhance our ability to broaden EMC’s best-in-class storage portfolio for the benefit of EMC and Data Domain customers and this, in turn, will accelerate EMC’s top- and bottom-line growth rates,” stated EMC CEO, Joe Tucci. “Our substantially superior proposal is a win-win for both companies.”

NetApp is a smaller company than EMC.  NetApp’s market cap is about $6.84 billion.

[via DealBook]