Oracle buyout rumours fuel EMC share price rise

Rumours of an Oracle acquisition spree cause EMC's share price to rocket

On the up: An analyst report linking EMC and Oracle has led to buyout speculation

Storage behemoth EMC has seen its share price rocket as rumours circulate about it becoming Oracle’s next takeover target.

According to the Wall Street Journal, speculation linking the two firms caused EMC’s share price to increase by 4.88 per cent to $21.29 (£13.36) a share yesterday. Conversely, Oracle’s share price was down by 1.16 per cent.

The rumours follow the publication of a report by the Citigroup analyst house on Wednesday, which named EMC, BMC Software, Cerner and F5 Networks as potential Oracle buyout targets.

According to the report, the driving force behind any future acquisition by Oracle would be its need to “fill out its hardware and infrastructure systems stack” and EMC, in particular, would “bring scale and IP to Oracle’s storage offerings".

At the time of writing, both firms were remaining tight-lipped over the speculation, which followed Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s declaration that NetApp could be a good acquisition target for the firm.