Network Associates Renews McAfee.com Bid

Network Associates

The company originally offered to acquire the remaining shares of McAfee.com in March but delayed the bid after disclosing that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating its fiscal 2000 accounting practices. It quickly renewed the bid but delayed it again after finding inaccuracies in its 1999 and 2000 financial reports.

Network Associates, a network management and security vendor based here, said it filed restated financial statements on Friday and that operating results for last year and the first quarter of this year were not impacted.

The company already owns about 75 percent of McAfee.com, which it spun out as a publicly traded company in December 1999. McAfee.com, Sunnyvale, Calif., provides online antivirus services and targets mostly consumers, while McAfee Security, a division of Network Associates, targets the business market.

Network Associates said it will offer McAfee.com stockholders 0.78 shares of Network Associates common stock in a tax-free exchange for each outstanding share of McAfee.com Class A common stock. The company said the terms of the offer are relatively unchanged from its previous offer.