Liste Newsletter

Index Performances
EPITEX, EPITA’S INDEX, Dec. 16, 2004: 82.21 (EPITEX set at 100 on Aug. 31, 2001)

News

MARKET FOCUS

U.S. stocks ended mostly lower on Thursday, ahead of the “quadruple witching” day of the month when options and futures contracts expire at the same time.

On the economic front, the U.S. current account deficit exploded to a third straight record in the third quarter to $164.7 billion, while housing starts fell 13.1 percent, its steepest decline since the early 1990s.

In further M&A news, pharmaceutical and household products company Johnson & Johnson agreed to acquire Guidant for $23.9 billion.

Earlier this week, Sprint said it would buy Nextel Communications in a $36-billion deal, Oracle announced its $10.3-billion takeover of enterprise software rival PeopleSoft and Symantec confirmed its $13.5-billion acquisition of Veritas Software.

OUTLOOK

With the expiration of options and futures contracts out of the way on Friday, the market is headed for quieter days ahead of the Christmas-New Year holiday period.

THE NUMBERS

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 14 points, or 0.1 percent, to 10,705. The Nasdaq Composite index lost 16 points, or 0.7 percent, to 2,146 while the Nasdaq-100 index of large capitalization tech and biotech stocks ended off 1.0 percent at 1,607.

Profile

Symantec and VERITAS Software said they will merge in an all-stock transaction, valued at about $13.5 billion.

The leader in storage software and the leader in security software will provide enterprise customers with a more effective way to secure and manage their most valuable asset, their information.

The combined company will be uniquely positioned to deliver information security and availability solutions across all platforms, from the desktop to the data center, from consumers and small businesses to large organizations and service providers.

The combined company will operate under the Symantec name, when the merger closes in the second quarter. Based on IDC data, the total market opportunity for the combined company today is approximately $35 billion and is expected to grow to $56 billion by 2007, Symantec executives said.

Symantec is the global leader in information security providing a broad range of software, appliances and services designed to help individuals, small and mid-sized businesses, and large enterprises secure and manage their IT infrastructure.

Symantec’s Norton brand of products is the worldwide leader in consumer security and problem-solving solutions.

VERITAS Software, one of the 10 largest software companies in the world, is a leading provider of software to enable utility computing.

In a utility computing model, IT resources are aligned with business needs and business applications are delivered with optimal performance and availability on top of shared computing infrastructure, minimizing hardware and labor costs.