Hedge Fund Manager Paul Singer Buys Big Stake in Informatica
Big stake of Informatica, a specialist in data integration services with a market value of about $4 billion, has been acquired by Paul Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, the $25 billion hedge fund has set its sights on a new target.
Though
Elliott was circumspect in describing its motivations in a regulatory
filing, the hedge fund appears likely to push its newest investment into
selling itself. The firm has made a specialty of taking positions in
enterprise technology companies and agitating for shifts in corporate
strategy, usually by calling for a sale to a private equity firm.
Last
month, Riverbed Technology agreed to sell itself to the private equity
firm Thoma Bravo and an arm of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan for
$3.6 billion after a long activist campaign by Elliott. And other
companies, including BMC Software and Novell, have also been prodded
into sales after the hedge fund emerged as an investor.
Informatica
has faced questions for several months about whether it should sell
itself, particularly after a similar software provider, Tibco, sold
itself to the private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for $4.3
billion, one of the largest leveraged buyouts in the technology industry
last year. Tibco was also under pressure from a hedge fund to weigh a
sale.
To
activist investors, many of these technology providers fit into a
common theme: No longer posting the rapid sales growth of yesteryear,
these companies have often presided over lagging stock growth. Moreover,
hedge funds have argued, the tech companies have turned to acquisitions
that have softened their focus and consumed cash that otherwise could
be paid out to shareholders through stock dividends.
Source: New York Times
