Whoa! A Tech Acquisition!

January 23, 2009 at 4:44 am PT

The first high-profile tech acquisition in months took place Thursday, but don’t take that as a harbinger of more deals.

Autonomy, a U.K. company that makes software that businesses use to track corporate information, acquired Interwoven (IWOV), a San Jose, Calif., document-management company, for $775 million in cash. Autonomy will sell some stock and tap a new line of credit in order to finance the deal.

The tech M&A world has been quiet for the last few months as companies adjust to the down economy. Many publicly traded tech companies have seen their market capitalizations cut in half over the last few months. Companies aren’t yet prepared to sell at such a discount, the conventional wisdom goes.

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Tagged with: acquisition, Autonomy, Ben Worthen, Digits, document management, frontpage, Interwoven, M&A, market capitalization, software, The Wall Street Journal

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