Activist investor Elliott Management Corp has taken a $1 billion stake in EMC Corp and plans to push it to spin off virtualization software unit VMware Inc , the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.EMC shares were up about 4 percent at $28.05 on Monday afternoon after touching a two-year high of $28.31 earlier on the New York Stock Exchange. VMware shares were down 1.6 percent at $93.75.Elliott, which would now be EMC's fifth-largest shareholder, is expected to argue that the company's present structure has hampered stock performance, the Journal said. (on.wsj.com/1sCyN6t)Officials of the hedge fund, which called EMC to inform it of the investment, plan to meet Chairman and CEO Joe Tucci, the report said.
VMware, Inc., is the provider of virtualization infrastructure solutions utilized by organizations to help transform the way they build, deliver and consume information technology (IT) resources. Shares of VMW fell by 1.44% or $-1.3701/share to $93.94. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $69.86 and as high as $112.89. On average, 1469770 shares of VMW exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 1672064.
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