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Mr. Rubinstein? Michael Dell on Line 1, Sir. Shall I Put Him Through to Voicemail?

by John Paczkowski
Posted on June 11, 2009 at 1:00 PM PT

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palm_logo_dell_styleIs Dell positioning itself to make a large acquisition? It certainly appears that way. The company recently hired mergers-and-acquisitions specialist David Johnson away from IBM (IBM). And yesterday, it sold off $1 billion in bonds. Dell (DELL) already has $9.7 billion in cash reserves on hand, so presumably it needs that extra billion for something beyond the “general corporate purposes” it claims. You know, like acquiring BMC (BMC). Or Symantec (SYMC). Or QLogic (QLGC). Or deduplication outfit CommVault (CVLT).

Or Palm (PALM), to indulge a years-old rumor. Palm is a logical target, isn’t it? Buying the company would place Dell firmly in the smartphone market it has so often expressed interest in. Can’t imagine an overture from Round Rock would go over too will with Palm’s new leadership, though. Surely Jon Rubinstein didn’t accept the CEO seat at Palm with the understanding that he might someday be working for Dell.

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  • This would certainly be the kind of Hail Mary that would make Dell relevant again. It would be big win for Elevation Partners, and versus the commodity, shrinking margins type of business that Dell is currently in, it would represent a high margin growth area for them, an approach that makes even more sense if the goal is to go after the enterprise customer in mobile (and dislodge RIM/Blackberry) versus a frontal assault on iPhone.

    As such, Rubinstein, et al could extract very favorable terms specific to running as a separate unit, IMHO.

    Market seems to think something is up specific to PALM, doesn't it?

    Mark
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About John

John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »

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