div style="text-align: justify;"span style="font-weight: bold;"Huron Consulting (NASDAQ:HURN)/span is getting lots of commentary following news out late Friday as the co disclosed need to restate financials for 2006-2008 and 1Q09 due to accounting errors, withdrew 2009 EPS guidance and lowered revs guidance by 12%, deals with an SEC investigation and announced the departure of CEO/CFO:br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"- Baird is downgrading HURN to Underperform with a $15 tgt (prev. $50) /spanon lack of confidence in their estimates as their previous concerns about retention of MDs has increased significantly given the restatement of earnings, potential reputational damage, the SEC inquiry, senior management turnover, disappointing 2Q09 results and lower 2009 top-line guidance indicative of no bonuses being paid in 2009.br /br /Firm's $15 price target represents 5.0x FTM estimated EV/EBITDA including stock comp expense or half the average of the previous six quarters given the significantly negative implications of Friday's announcement. While ...

Investors active in the IT sector were shocked on the morning of 3/18/09 as they awoke to news that International Business Machines [IBM: 91.95, 0.00 (0.00%)] is working to make its largest acquisition ever when the offered to buy Sun Microsystems [JAVA: 8.89, 0.00 (0.00%)]. The important thing to consider here is whether this aligns with IBM’s overall strategy and reinforces their competitive edge over the likes of Hewlett-Packard [HPQ: 28.99, 0.00 (0.00%)], Cisco [CSCO: 16.50, 0.00 (0.00%)], and Oracle [ORCL: 15.83, 0.00 (0.00%)]. So where do I stand on this acquisition, after all, don’t acquisitions destroy shareholder value? Initially, one could say that this is a terrible move for IBM. Who wants a company that posted a loss per share of -$2.40, and has been unable to shake off

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Atmel Corporation (ATML) is expected to release its Q3:FY08 results on Oct. 29. Earlier, the company reported Q2:FY08 revenues of $420.9 million, up 4.1% y/y and up 2.4% q/q. Microcontrollers posted record revenues of $143 million and the ASIC segment posted revenues of $121 million.Recently, Microchip, Inc. (MCHP) and ON Semiconductor (ONNN) announced an unsolicited offer to acquire ATML for $5/share in cash. The offer represents a 52.4% premium to Oct. 2 closing price, and values ATML at $2.3 billion. The deal is led by MCHP, with ONNN acquiring the NVM and RF/Auto businesses. MCHP plans to sell Atmel's ASIC business together with the French fab to a third party. Going forward, management expects revenues to be down 3% 7% in Q3:FY08, due to onetime revenue adjustment. Excluding these adjustments, Q3 organic revenue guidance is for up 1% to 4% sequentially. We ...