Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Lotos-Eaters”
Wall Street traders had to scramble to take a Lotus position last week, when out of Big Blue came a lightning bolt that shocked the software industry.
The now-frisky 71-year-old International Business Machines Corp. mounted the first hostile takeover try in its button-down history, bidding $3.3 billion for software-maker Lotus Development Corp. The tender offer of $60 a share for the Cambridge, Mass., producer of the popular networking program Notes was nearly twice as much as Lotus stock had been fetching.
Smart money was divided on whether a friendly rescuer, such as AT&T Corp. or Hewlett-Packard Co., might ride in to fend off the unwanted attentions of the novice corporate raiders from Armonk, N.Y.
A majority of analysts, however, said IBM’s bid would have to be sweetened regardless.
IBM chief Louis Gerstner acknowledged that the most potent asset of Lotus is its innovative work force and vowed not to change the creative environment or entrepreneurial spirit, to keep Lotus intact, and retain the headquarters in Cambridge.
If the creative programmers at Lotus can be convinced that IBM will guide with a light hand, they might welcome the stability such a deep-pocketed corporate parent would bring.
