Dude, You're Getting Perot Systems

September 21, 2009 at 5:00 am PT

David Johnson, the mergers-and-acquisitions specialist Dell hired away from IBM (IBM) earlier this year, has clearly been busy these past few months. This morning the PC maker announced plans to buy information technology services outfit Perot Systems (PER) for about $3.9 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Dell (DELL) will offer $30 a share for Perot, a 68 percent premium over Friday’s closing price Friday of $17.91.

“This significantly expands Dell’s enterprise-solutions capabilities and makes Perot Systems’ strengths available to even more customers around the world,” Dell CEO Michael Dell said in a statement. “There will be efficiencies from combining the companies, but the acquisition makes such great sense because of the obvious ways our businesses complement each other.”

The deal is expected to close some time in January and when it does, Perot will become Dell’s services unit.

An interesting move. While there had been speculation that Dell was looking to acquire a handset company like Palm (PALM), it seems Dell was far more interested in boosting its enterprise business by acquiring an outsourcer like Perot.

Tagged with: acquisition, customers, David Johnson, deal, Dell, digital, enterprise solutions, hardware, IBM, information technology, John Paczkowski, mergers, Michael Dell, Palm, PC, Perot Systems, premium, services, share, terms

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Gene Sartin

At The Transition Companies, we believe that acquiring companies, especially ones that have successfully cornered a specific audience, is often the most efficient and effective way to grow a company. Dell is looking to not only grow organically but to shift their current strategy and begin focusing on the services sector of industry. Through acquisitions like the recent Perot Systems deal, Dell will catapult themselves into the computer services sector allowing them to quickly compete with HP and IBM. “We can definitely expect to see continued acquisitions from Dell”, says Mike Ryan of The Transition Companies, “as they cast their net deeper into the computer services sector allowing them to rapidly expand their customer base