From PC Mag: We're less than a month into 2018, and there's already a potential new contender for the largest tech deal ever. According to CNBC, Dell is considering a move to sell itself to VMware in a massive reverse merger that could exceed the record-setting $67 billion Dell paid to buy EMC in 2015.
Dell and VMware both declined to comment.
Why would Dell, which already owns 80 percent of VMware, sell itself back to the smaller company? There are a few compelling reasons.
The reverse merger would allow Dell to once again become a public company without having to undergo a fresh initial public offering (IPO). The company went private in 2013 in a $24.4 billion deal that gave ownership control to founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Partners. Dell is reportedly carrying around $50 billion in debt, but going public through VMware would allow Dell and Silver Lake to sell back some of their shares publicly, both to offset the debt and to cash in themselves.
The other angle here is all about the cloud. VMware remains profitable and with growing revenue, but the company's virtualized platform is losing business to public cloud infrastructure players such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
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