HP, Dell in 3Par Bidding War

Wade Roush8/27/10

It’s almost like watching the bids on eBay. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) in Round Rock, TX, and Palo Alto, CA-based Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ) continue to issue dueling takeover offers for Fremont, CA-based 3Par (NYSE: PAR), whose storage virtualization technology is a hot commodity. Dell originally offered $18 per share or $1.15 billion in mid-August, and HP significantly upped the ante with a $24-per-share or $1.6 billion bid on August 23. Dell issued a matching offer yesterday, whereupon HP bid $27 per share ($1.8 billion). That prompted another matching offer from Dell this morning. HP’s latest move: a $30-per-share bid amounting to $2 billion.

Wade Roush is Xconomy's chief correspondent and editor of Xconomy San Francisco. You can e-mail him at wroush@xconomy.com or follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/wroush.