Private Investors to Acquire Freescale for $17.6 Billion

A private equity consortium will acquire Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE: FSL) for $17.6 billion. The consortium includes The Blackstone Group, The Carlyle Group, Permira Funds and Texas Pacific Group.



The deal announced on 15-September-2006 values Freescale at $40 per share in cash, representing a premium of approximately 36% over Freescale's average closing share price during the 30 trading days ended September 8, 2006.



Freescale became a publicly traded company in July 2004 following a spin-off from Motorola. The company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing or sales operations in more than 30 countries.

http://www.freescale.com

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Extreme Opens Investigation Into Stock Option Grants

Extreme Networks' Board of Directors appointed a special committee to review the company's historical practices for stock option grants and the accounting for option grants. The special committee has retained outside independent legal counsel to assist it in its review.



Extreme had earlier received and responded to an informal inquiry letter from the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting that the company voluntarily provide documents related to the same subject matter.



The company also said it will delay filing its Form 10-K for the year ended July 2, 2006.

http://www.extremenetworks.com

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Seagate Expects 2.5TB HDDs in 2009

Seagate Technology reported a new world record for magnetic recording density of 421 Gbits per square inch (421 Gbit/in2). The demonstration used perpendicular recording heads and media created with currently available production equipment that validates Seagate's ability to scale the technology for the foreseeable future without major technology changes or capital additions.



Seagate said its demonstration reaffirms the disc drive as "the undisputed king of storage when capacity and cost-effectiveness are both required."



At the demonstrated density level, Seagate expects the capacity ranges to result in solutions ranging in 40GB to 275GB for 1-and 1.8-inch consumer electronics drives, 500GB for 2.5-inch notebook drives, and nearly 2.5TB for 3.5-inch desktop and enterprise class drives. At 2.5TB capacity, a hard drive would be capable of storing 41,650 hours of music, 800,000 digital photographs, 4,000 hours of digital video or 1,250 video games. Seagate anticipates that solutions at these density levels could begin to emerge in 2009.



The areal density of 421 Gbpsi was demonstrated using 10 E-3 off-track bit error rate criteria with 5% squeeze and meeting a 10% off-track capability at a data rate of 735 Mbps. The track density was 275,000 tracks per inch, and the linear density was 1.53 million bits per inch for a bit aspect ratio of 5.6. The demonstration was conducted using a product channel, perpendicular head, and thermally stable media created with current production equipment.

http://www.seagate.com

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RSA Stockholders Approve EMC Acquisition

RSA Security stockholders voted to adopt the agreement and plan of merger pursuant to which EMC will acquire RSA. The acquisition is expected to be completed imminently.

http://www.rsasecurity.com/http://www.emc.com

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