Riverbed suitor takes stake in Juniper

The hedge fund is pushing Juniper to pay dividends to shareholders, buy back stock, and cut costs

Activist investor, Elliott Management, which last week made an unsolicited bid to buy Riverbed Technology, this week took a 6.2 per cent stake in Juniper Networks.

The hedge fund is pushing Juniper to pay dividends to shareholders, buy back stock, and cut costs. Elliott believe these moves could raise Juniper's stock price to $US35 to $US40 per share. It closed last Friday at $US23.54.

Juniper said it "welcomes the opinions and insights of its shareholders and is always open to constructive input toward the goal of enhancing shareholder value."

Elliott suggests Juniper look to cut or divest its security and enterprise switching businesses. Juniper's security assets were reportedly on the block at one time, and the company has had execution issues in both security and switching in recent years.

+MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: SDN is disruptive at Juniper +

Elliott's move comes after last week's offer to buy Riverbed at $US19 per share, or about $US3 billion. The offer price represented a 6 per cent premium on Riverbed stock at the time.

Riverbed said it would consider the offer.

Speculation was raised this week that Elliott might push for a merger between Riverbed and Juniper, which have complementary product lines. Juniper makes switches, routers and security appliances; Riverbed makes WAN optimization and application acceleration devices.

Juniper and Riverbed have a partnership for Juniper to license Riverbed's Steelhead WAN optimization technology.

Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 27 years, 22 at Network World. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy.

Read more about lan and wan in Network World's LAN & WAN section.

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