By Brenon Daly
Since when does an army with out its best basic go to the attack? That technique would look to go towards convention, yet Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has carried out just that since dumping Mark Hurd for his foibles. The tech big has chased a pair of offers to valuations which might be basically 2-3 instances the prevailing market several. HP’s recent bidding war over 3PAR (PAR) and the purchase of ArcSight (ARST) shows a level of aggressiveness that indicates to us that the drivers for the acquisitions may have been emotional as well as financial, at least to a small degree.
If we step back and look at the setting for both specials,
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At the risk of drifting too far into psychology,
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Office 2010 Home And Student Key, paying 11x trailing sales for 3PAR might be considered overcompensation, or at the least, ‘heavy compensation,’ if you’ll forgive the pun.) If investors and others were going to view HP as weak or directionless while its corner office was empty, well,
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Windows 7 X64, we’re just playing armchair psychologist here. But something beyond just straight numbers seemed to be at work in HP’s recent moves.