Chicago (IL) – Sun Microsystems, Inc. has had an amazing day on the stock market. Whereas the average volume of daily shares traded is three million, IBM’s recent interest in the company has sent the trading volume to 162.1 million, up 5400% in one day. In addition, the stock price continues north, closing up $3.92 on the day at $8.89, which is 78.9% increase.
IBM has reportedly made an offer of $6.5 billion to buy Sun, a 100% premium above its Tuesday closing price, and an offer of around $8.75 per share. However, news has traveled fast across the Internets and everybody and their brother has gotten in on the deal. Were IBM to pay current market value, it would cost them $6.62 billion at least.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the $6.5 billion offer could close within a week. And it may be that by this time next week, there is no stand-alone Sun Microsystems any longer, but only the Sun division of IBM.
This raises concern and questions over what will happen with Solaris, Java and all of the open-source hardware Sun has worked with over the years if IBM acquires the company. Will its development continue? Will it continue in the same way? Will we have to switchover to .NET technology because IBM begins changing the licensing for Java?
While things are unlikely to change, under new ownership anything is possible.
As it is right now, Sun’s stock picture is looking rosy, up almost 80% in one day. If only that valuation had come a couple quarters back they might still be looking at going it alone.
