Nextel Communications has agreed to acquire the high-speed Internet wireless assets of bankrupt WorldCom for $144 million in cash, besting a bid by BellSouth, according to a court filing.
WorldCom (WCOEQ) said in early May that BellSouth (BLS), which is a partner in Cingular Wireless with SBC Communications (SBC), had offered the best price of $65 million but the deal was subject to better offers at an auction held last week.
The No. 2 U.S. long-distance telephone carrier and one of the biggest movers of Internet data, WorldCom paid about $1 billion for the wireless assets at the height of the Internet boom in 1999 through the acquisition of other companies. The company said it would file information about the Nextel (NXTL) agreement and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court will hold a hearing to consider the transaction.
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Veritas gets Precise: Veritas Software completed its acquisition of Precise Software Solutions, consummating a high-tech courtship that began before the industry's recent flurry of marriage proposals.
Veritas (VRTS), a maker of storage software products, paid $609 million in cash and stock for Precise Software (PRSE), which provides tools to help businesses get more out of their applications software. The final price tag was slightly higher than the estimated cost of $537 million when the two companies first agreed to merge.
Since Veritas and Precise announced their engagement, several other high-tech unions have been proposed, including Oracle's $6.3 billion hostile bid for rival business software maker PeopleSoft.
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Corbis sues Amazon: Digital image provider Corbis, owned by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, filed suit against Internet retailer Amazon.com for allegedly selling unauthorized copies of Corbis' images, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Corbis sued Amazon (AMZN), along with 15 poster and picture stores, in a U.S. District Court for allegedly selling hundreds of music, sports and celebrity images Corbis represents, the newspaper said. An Amazon spokesman cited by the Journal said the retailer would remove the images at issue from its website.
The spokesman told the paper Amazon had not been notified of the problems before the suit was filed. But Corbis said the lawsuit would go forward even though Amazon said it would pull sellers of the pictures from its merchant site, according to the report. Corbis requested as much as $150,000 for each of its infringed copyrighted works, along with other forms of relief.
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And eSpeed sues BrokerTec: Cantor Fitzgerald LP's eSpeed has sued BrokerTec, its largest electronic bond trading rival, alleging that BrokerTec's trading system infringes on an eSpeed patent.
The lawsuit deepens the long-running strains between the two firms. BrokerTec and eSpeed (ESPD) facilitate the trading of many kinds of bonds and are among the largest wholesale traders of U.S. Treasuries, a $3.3 trillion market according to the Bond Market Association. BrokerTec is a unit of Britain's ICAP Plc, which eSpeed also named as a defendant. OM AB, a Swedish technology company that helped create BrokerTec's platform, is also a defendant.
ESpeed is seeking an order directing BrokerTec to stop operating its electronic trading system, saying it infringes on an eSpeed patent that protects some eSpeed proprietary systems and electronic trading methods. The patent, known as the "580" patent, is for "a data processing system for implementing transaction management of auction-based trading for specialized items such as fixed income instruments."
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TI, makin' it in America: Texas Instruments said it will build a $3 billion chip-making plant in Texas, bucking a trend among semiconductor makers to shift production overseas.
The world's biggest maker of semiconductors for mobile telephones said that groundbreaking for the new fabrication facility, which will be near its Dallas headquarters, is expected by the end of 2005.
The facility will build some of the world's most advanced semiconductors on 300-millimeter, or 12-inch diameter, silicon wafers, TI (TXN) said. It also said the plant will be the company's second facility with that capability and is expected to employ up to 1,000 people.
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Compiled by Kari L. Dean. Reuters and AP contributed to this report.
