Valuations

The battle is heating up. After a $1.6 billion counteroffer from Hewlett-Packer Monday, Dell is said to be preparing a sweetened bid for data storage provider 3Par.

In deal-speak, a divestiture is when a company unloads a division. In fact, there are a variety approaches. For example, one common method is to sell the division for cash to another company. This happened recently with Zimbra, which Yahoo! (YHOO) sold to VMware (VMW).

As the stock market powers ahead again, many nervous investors are asking themselves if shares are now overvalued. The Dow Jones and the broader S&P 500, after all, are now up more than 50% off their recent lows and picked up again this week. For many bears caught off-guard by the sharp...