Right before the long weekend Dell was supposed to be negotiating to buy Quest Software.
Quest is looking for an offer better than the $2 billion Insight Venture Partners, the private equity house, bid in early March and Quest accepted barring a superior offer.
Bloomberg says it knows from unnamed sources that Dell is among “several companies that made offers” during Quest’s so-called “go shop” period. And Quest has all but said it expected to get the superior offer it’s looking for.
Whether that offer will come from Dell or from any of a handful of companies that could theoretically include HP, IBM, BMC, CA, Microsoft (Quest’s wares have a Microsoft bias) or Oracle is anybody’s guess. Insight offered $23 a share; JPMorgan Chase says it’s worth $28.