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| Posted: 23 Aug 2010 09:41 AM PDT Home > The Ticker > Archives > 2010 > August > 23 > Entry Hewlett-Packard Co. disclosed Monday that it has made a higher bid than Dell Inc. for 3Par Inc., a promising maker of data storage systems. HP said it would offer $24 a share, or $1.6 billion, for 3Par, eclipsing Dell's offer of $1.15 billion made last week. Dell officials said last week they prized 3Par for its product offerings at the upper end of the storage market. There was no immediate response from Dell to the HP bid. For both companies, the potential acquisition would bolster their services for corporate customers, a high-profit margin part of their business. Shares of 3Par were up 40 percent this morning, to $25.40, as a result of the new bid. Analyst Jayson Noland with R.W. Baird & Co. wrote today that he would not be surprised to see Dell respond with its own competitive bid. Noland noted that Dell has already put considerable pressure on its longstanding storage partner, EMC Corp., with its initial bid for 3Par. Noland said that HP, like Dell, is trying to bolster its offerings for storage systems. HP also told analysts that it had begun doing due diligence on a possible acquisition of 3Par, based in Fremont, Calif., before Dell made its bid last Monday. Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment Categories: Technology This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Personal Finance Q&A: How do I get my credit card rate lowered? - Sacramento Bee Posted: 23 Aug 2010 03:07 AM PDT My credit card statement says the Annual Percentage Rate is 24 percent. Is there anything I can do to bring that down? Can you give me some suggestions? - Emily Go ahead and ask for a lower APR, suggests Certified Financial Planner Howard Kramer of Plantation, Fla. Call customer service and talk about your unhappiness, try to build rapport with the customer service representative and hopefully you will get an initial offer. Then try to get to a manager who will inevitably do better. If the first offer to lower the rate is not significant, keep pressing the case, he said. If you have a good history with the credit card company, with no or few late payments, you have a better shot at a lower rate. It is always helpful, too, to mention any balance transfer offers from other credit card companies if you have them. Ultimately, you have to be friendly, persistent and determined to get a lower rate. In general, credit card companies place a lot of emphasis on credit scores, so you should brush up on what goes into them. The most important factor in calculating a credit score, according to www.myfico.com, is timely payment of your bills and not having any negative marks on your record, such as a delinquency. Next comes the balances in relation to the credit lines. Those two factors you can control. First take a look at your credit report, which you can get for free at annualcreditreport.com, to make sure there are no errors that are lowering your score. Then, do all you can to bring your balances down. To get the best credit score, your goal should be to use no more than 30 to 50 percent of your available credit. Need help with a money problem? Columnist Harriet Johnson Brackey is working with certified financial planners to get answers. Submit your questions at SunSentinel.com/moneyquestion or call 954-356-4628. To see previous questions, visit SunSentinel.com/PersonalFinanceQandA What You Should Know About Comments on Sacbee.com Sacbee.com is happy to provide a forum for reader interaction, discussion, feedback and reaction to our stories. However, we reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments or ban users who can't play nice. (See our full terms of service here.) Here are some rules of the road: • Keep your comments civil. Don't insult one another or the subjects of our articles. If you think a comment violates our guidelines click the "report abuse" button to notify the moderators. Responding to the comment will only encourage bad behavior. • Don't use profanities, vulgarities or hate speech. This is a general interest news site. Sometimes, there are children present. Don't say anything in a way you wouldn't want your own child to hear. • Do not attack other users; focus your comments on issues, not individuals. • Stay on topic. Only post comments relevant to the article at hand. If you want to discuss an issue with a specific user, click on his profile name and send him a direct message. • Do not copy and paste outside material into the comment box. • Don't repeat the same comment over and over. We heard you the first time. • Do not use the commenting system for advertising. That's spam and it isn't allowed. • Don't use all capital letters. That's akin to yelling and not appreciated by the audience. You should also know that The Sacramento Bee does not screen comments before they are posted. You are more likely to see inappropriate comments before our staff does, so we ask that you click the "report abuse" button to submit those comments for moderator review. You also may notify us via email at feedback@sacbee.com. Note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us the profile name of the user who made the comment. Remember, comment moderation is subjective. You may find some material objectionable that we won't and vice versa. If you submit a comment, the user name of your account will appear along with it. Users cannot remove their own comments once they have submitted them, but you may ask our staff to retract one of your comments by sending an email to feedback@sacbee.com. Again, make sure you note the headline on which the comment is made and tell us your profile name. If you choose to use our "reply to comment" feature, you should note that the length of the quoted comment will count against the size limits for your comment. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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