By silicon.com, 16 September 2004 09:35
NEWS 16.09.99: Motorola is buying General Instruments (GI) in an agreement that values the company at $11bn.
The deal is aimed at the converged voice, video and data market - particularly for consumers.
And...
16.09.99: Microsoft has bought graphics and technical-drawing company, Visio, for $1.3bn, the software giant is paying for the deal with a share swap.
16.09.04: We don't normally select two stories for our '5 years ago' articles but these two complement one another well, showing the full extent of the acquisition madness which swept across the industry in 1999 and 2000.
It's certainly been a while since we regularly saw valuations of $11bn go through the M&A books - with the exception of the mega-telco deals - and at the time it will have raised a few eyebrows, nothing more.
Also worth noting is how ahead of many rivals Motorola was in predicting the voice, video, data convergence boom which appears to be upon us only now and even then in relatively nascent form.
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