Brocade Communications Systems on Tuesday secured a US$1.1 billion loan to fund its acquisition of Foundry Networks despite a tightening of credit markets amid the Wall Street meltdown.
The loan came through even as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell more than 500 points (5.11 percent), and many technology stocks dropped even more steeply. Among those hardest hit were Sun Microsystems, Nortel Networks, Amazon.com and Qwest Communications International, all down more than 10 per cent.
Apple shares went down 9.25 per cent while Google suffered less damage, falling 6.79 per cent.
As they did in the bloodbath last Monday, most major tech stocks, including Microsoft and Cisco Systems, outpaced the Dow in their journey down on Tuesday.
Brocade’s planned acquisition of Foundry, announced in July, will expand the storage-area-networking pioneer into the Ethernet LAN business for an end-to-end set of offerings. Brocade said in July it would exchange a combination of stock and cash for each Foundry share, partially funding the deal with about $1.5 billion of debt financing from Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.
