Summary: AttachMSFT [sic] does not have enough money to complete an acquisition of Novell, so it is reaching out for a loan

IN THE coming days we shall cover the AttachMSFT acquisition of Novell and the barriers which remain, including the important fall of the CPTN deal and the many lawsuits from investors. One of the lesser-discussed barriers is actually financial and according to this report from Bloomberg:

Attachmate Corp., the connectivity solutions provider owned by private-equity firms, is seeking $1.09 billion in loans to finance its acquisition of Novell Inc.

Attachmate is seeking an $825 million first-lien term loan, a $40 million first-lien revolving line of credit and a $225 million second-lien facility, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell said today in a regulatory filing.

This was echoed by [1, 2, 3] and for some more recently-written background:

6. Novell, the Waltham open-source software developer that once called Utah home, finally found a mate in Attachmate last month, following an eight-month strategic review. The Seattle firm shelled out $2.2 billion for Novell.

There is a lot more to be said about this planned takeover, but that is a subject for future posts. We still have a backlog of about 20 posts. ⬆