Cadence Design Systems took a US$253 million step Wednesday in its effort to offer one-stop shopping to chipmakers who produce the increasingly complex heart of personal computers.
The company agreed to buy Quickturn Design Systems for $14 a share, or $253 million in stock, topping for now the hostile bid from Quickturn rival Mentor Graphics.
If the proposed deal goes through, Cadence (CDN) -- the largest maker of software to design computer chips -- will add Quickturn's tools that test and validate semiconductors to its own technology.
As chip designs become increasingly complex, Cadence is seeking to offer one-stop shopping to chipmakers such as Intel, National Semiconductor, and others.
Wednesday's announcement was the latest turn in an acrimonious takeover attempt by Mentor Graphics (MENT), which launched its offer to buy Quickturn (QKTN) in August for $12.125 a share in cash, or $216 million.
In a hotly contested takeover battle, Quickturn rejected Mentor's offer and has been fighting in court to maintain its takeover defenses.
Mentor Graphics said on Wednesday it was "considering its options" in light of the Cadence offer. In a brief statement, Mentor said it would have no further comment until its review was completed.
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Nasdaq taps Broadcast.com: Shares of Broadcast.com (BCST) jumped more than 27 percent Wednesday after the company announced a pact with Nasdaq to broadcast earnings conference calls for Nasdaq-100 companies over the Web.
"We would like to see Internet broadcasting become a standard corporate communications tool for public companies," said Alfred Berkeley, Nasdaq's president.
The endorsement boosted Broadcast.com's stock $15, or 27 percent, to $69.75 on Nasdaq.
Under the agreement, Nasdaq will offer each of its top 100 listed companies the opportunity to broadcast all of its earnings calls through co-branded pages on the Broadcast.com Web site. The broadcasts will be tested in early 1999. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Investment bank Hambrecht & Quist responded to the news by upgrading its rating for Broadcast.com to "buy" from "hold."
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Big contract from IRS: Computer Sciences Corp. said on Wednesday the US Internal Revenue Service awarded a CSC-led consortium a 15-year outsourcing contract to manage the tax agency's computer systems -- a contract analysts estimate could be worth several billion dollars.
CSC spokesman Mike Dickerson said the CSC PRIME Alliance includes International Business Machines (CSC), KPMG, Lucent Technologies (LU), Northrop Grumman (NOC), privately held contractor SAIC and Unisys (UIS). Financial terms weren't disclosed.
In a statement, the IRS confirmed that it had named CSC as the lead contractor in what it said was a 10- to 15-year computer services deal that represented "a major step toward overhauling its antiquated computer systems."
The CSC-group vanquished a rival contractor group led by Lockheed Martin that included Electronic Data Systems and Andersen Consulting, analysts said.
Wall Street analysts have estimated the computer modernization deal could be worth $3 to $5 billion, but with follow-on contracts might reach as much as $10 billion over the full life of the contract.
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AOL scores Yellow Pages: America Online (AOL) said on Wednesday that GTE and Bell Atlantic will pay a combined $31 million over three years to get their directory pages on AOL, AOL.com, and AOL's localized Digital City service.
That figure is a combination of advertising sales and distribution revenue, AOL said.
GTE's SuperPages and Bell Atlantic's BigYellow services offer advertising listing for businesses. GTE also runs BigBook. Advertising purchased individually on any of these sites, or on AOL, will appear on all of the services.
AOL's Yellow Pages is expected to launch later this month with listings for 11 million US businesses, as well as product and service information for advertisers, AOL said. GTE's SuperPages and Bell Atlantic's BigYellow will share a common listings and advertising database.
Reuters contributed to this report.
