Buyout firm Francisco Partners and the private equity arm of activist hedge fund Elliott Management Corp are in advanced talks to acquire Dell Inc's software division for more than US$2bil (RM8.16bil), three people familiar with the matter said.
Divesting the software assets will help Dell refocus its technology portfolio and bolster its balance sheet after it agreed in October to buy data storage company EMC Corp for US$67bil (RM273.2bil). EMC owns a controlling stake in VMWare Inc, a cloud-based virtualisation software company.