The company IBM is currently negotiating a deal in which it will buy Sun Microsystems for the hefty sum of US$7 billion. The deal will be a very important one, and according to The NY Times could result in an anti-trust challenge.
A combination of these two companies would create a new one, with an immense amount of money being spent on research and development. As you may know, IBM and Sun are both companies that invest heavily into developing new technologies, and if they merged, they would have a budget of around about $9 billion a year on R&D alone.
According to the NY Times, Sun"s stock has gone up by $4.10 (82%) a share since the news was announced, and is expected to hit around $10 per share. This deal would be the largest in IBM"s history, the largest before this one was $4.9B for the company Cognos. Also, "Together, I.B.M. and Sun would have about 65 percent of the market for server computers running the Unix operating system and 42 percent of the total server market, measured in the dollar value of the market."
This would be a huge event in the history of technology, so be sure to keep a look out for more news on this as it develops.