This Could End the Megabuyout Drought

Just as one big tech company's buyout efforts appear to be faltering, along comes another potential megadeal candidate with a better shot at success.

BMC Software Inc., which has been owned by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital since 2013, is considering combining with rival CA Inc. in a transaction that would take the latter private, Bloomberg News reported late Tuesday. The news sparked a rally in CA shares that drove the company's market value up to $15 billion, which means a buyout would be the biggest since Dell Inc.'s management-led takeover in 2013.

The deal has a much more realistic chance of occurring than a leveraged buyout of Citrix Systems Inc., the $12 billion cloud-computing company whose discussions with private equity firms over a take-private deal have reportedly become bogged down. That's because BMC is essentially a strategic buyer that can afford to pay up because of the potential synergies it can extract. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's the same dynamic that facilitated the most recent (and only) megabuyout since Dell: Apollo Global Management's $12.3 billion acquisition of ADT Corp., which was combined with Protection 1, another home-security company owned by the New York firm.