Setting The Scene

Reports from The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s say that EMC held discussions with Hewlett-Packard and Dell, and possibly Oracle and Cisco as well, about the possibility of combining with one of them either as a merger of equals or by being purchased outright. However, those talks seem to have ended with no move on anyone's part so far. And while it appears that such a move will not happen in the near future, that could change at any time.

Interest in the topic actually started in July when it was revealed that activist investment firm Elliot Management had acquired a $1 billion equity stake in EMC, or nearly 2 percent of that company's shares, making it EMC's fifth-largest investor. Elliot Management started pressuring EMC to sell its 80 percent stake in VMware, but EMC said it preferred to keep EMC as a whole.