Dell Says HP Paid Too Much For 3PAR, HP Says Dell Offered Almost As Much

Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of the company that bears his name, said that HP paid too much for 3PAR, especially given the relatively low price Dell later paid to acquire another storage vendor, Compellent, according to Bloomberg.

HP in September closed on its $2.35 billion acquisition of 3PAR after a short but intensive bidding war with Dell.

Dell started the contest with a surprise $1.15 billion bid for 3PAR, a developer of storage arrays featuring such services as clustering, tiered storage, and thin provisioning, which allows applications to be configured with more storage capacity than is physically available.

HP followed almost immediately with its own bid, and after less than 20 days of back and forth sealed the bidding with an offer of $2.35 billion, but not before Dell pushed its final offer to close to $2.3 billion.

Michael Dell told Bloomberg in an interview that he was right in dropping his company's bid for 3PAR.

"We showed a good discipline and didn't take an emotional decision...I think HP paid way too much for 3PAR," Dell said, as quoted by Bloomberg.

Later, in a separate conversation with Bloomberg, HP Chairman Ray Lane responded that Dell was ready to pay almost as much for 3PAR.

"Well, Michael (Dell)'s a good friend," Lane said. "But didn't Michael pay almost what we paid? I mean, he was willing to pay just under what we paid. It was a bidding war. And so he went all the way up to almost what we paid. So he was willing to pay that price, too. So I don't understand the comment."

Dell in December agreed to pay about $960 million for storage vendor Compellent. That price accounts for Compellent's cash-on-hand of about $140 million. It is currently reselling Compellent products to its customers while waiting for the acquisition to close.