brocade

Shares of Foundry Networks soared more than 17 percent in premarket trading Thursday, after the company announced last evening that its merger with Brocade was still alive but at a lower purchase price.

Under the revised agreement, Brocade reduced its purchase price for the Santa Clara, Calif.-based switching and routing provider to approximately $2.6 billion from its initial agreement of $3 billion. Foundry shareholders are entitled to receive $16.50 a share in cash for every share of the company they own, verses $18.50 a share in cash and 0.0907 shares of Brocade common stock in … Read more

Update at 4:45 p.m. PDT, with information from Foundry's proxy filing on adjourning the meeting to get more shareholder votes.

Foundry Networks delayed a meeting to vote on its merger with Brocade Communications Systems until next week, after failing to get enough investors to support the deal.

Foundry called a special shareholders meeting at 10 a.m. PDT on Friday to vote on its proposed merger with Brocade, which was valued at approximately $3 billion when it was announced in July.

But shortly before 2 p.m., Foundry announced it would adjourn the meeting until Wednesday at … Read more

I often joked in the past that Fibre Channel switching leader Brocade Communications Systems followed an "old woman who swallowed a fly" acquisition strategy. To bolster its market position, Brocade grabbed Fibre Channel director vendor McData which purchased CNT which purchased Inrange. What was once a market with over a half dozen vendors is now centered on two: Brocade and Cisco Systems.

Even in this enviable position, Brocade faced two dilemmas: One, Fibre Channel itself will be challenged by 10, 40, and 100GbE moving forward. Ethernet, as you know, is the domain of Cisco, Extreme Networks, and Hewlett-Packard … Read more

Brocade announced it plans to acquire Foundry Networks, in a deal valued at approximately $3 billion.

Under the agreement, Brocade will pay a combination of $18.50 of cash plus 0.0907 shares of Brocade common stock in exchange for each share of Foundry common stock, for a total value of $19.25 per share, the two companies said in a joint press release issued Monday.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Foundry is a 12-year-old company that does enterprise and service provider switching and routing. Brocade's CEO praised it as "strong and well-respected" in their industry, during a … Read more

Correction: The dollar figure in the headline has been changed to accurately reflect the story.

From a public relations perspective, this hasn't been an auspicious year for Brocade Communications.

In January, the company's former CEO got hit with a long jail sentence for criminal misconduct. Now it's going to cost a cool $160 million for Brocade Communications to settle a federal securities class action lawsuit tied to the company's stock option backdating practices.

In a press release issued Monday afternoon, the company said it had recorded a pretax expense of $160 million related to the settlement … Read more

The former chief executive of Brocade Communications Systems may be the subject of criminal and civil charges to be announced by federal prosecutors on Thursday afternoon.

"We fully expect charges to be filed," said Richard Marmaro, an attorney for Gregory Reyes, Brocade's former CEO.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, FBI and U.S. Attorney's office in San Francisco are holding a joint press conference at 2 p.m. PST to announce "developments" in their ongoing probe of stock option backdating.

While the announcement did not name any company, the file name of the Microsoft … Read more