By Jim Reavis

This is only a rumor, if it were an actual event you would be instructed by the authorities where to redeem your SYMC stock.  Multiple Friends of Risk Bloggers have told me that Symantec has been in talks with investors over their strategic options, with the most likely outcome (if anything happens) being a move to go private!  Stepping out of the public markets would likely accelerate the massive industry shakeup we have been seeing, it may soon become pointless to have information security indices if we don’t have stocks to track.

I want to stress that the FoRBs (Friends of Risk Bloggers - of course) are not insiders with Symantec, I am certainly not an insider, my investments consist of a little dirt and contributing to my doctor’s 401k.  However, they are smart people who do pay attention.  Symantec’s stock has been up and down of late, I think John Thompson is a great CEO and has made some very smart moves to beef up their enterprise solutions, perhaps a couple of years sans SOX will allow the execs to focus more on the business and aligning their healthy security and storage product portfolio with market needs.

We can be certain that the megadeals we have seen in information security are not over.  I would certainly think that since Google bought Postini, MessageLabs will get picked up soon, I would assume their Star Technologies Services spinoff announcement in June was the necessary precursor to get a deal done.

I hope to see a bunch of you at BlackHat, with all the M&A going on, we can play musical nametags!