DAVID HAFFENREFFER, CNN ANCHOR: The biggest-ever software merger may be taking place in the hot B2B arena.</s>DEBORAH MARCHINI, CNN ANCHOR: Business-to-business sale: We go to Sasha Salama at the Nasdaq marketsite for more. Hi, Sasha.</s>SASHA SALAMA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Deborah and David. Thanks very much. It is being billed as the largest software merger ever between two companies. "The Wall Street Journal" says that i2 Technologies, the symbol ITWO, is buying Aspect Development, the symbol there ASDV. It's a stock deal worth $9.3 billion and it is quite a hot area. As you mentioned, Wall Street's been very enthusiastic about business-to- business e-commerce and the implications for cutting costs and making companies even leaner and meaner. There you see i2 Technologies. Wall Street has loved this stock. In fact, over the past 12 months, which you don't see there, the stock is up nearly 900 percent. Aspect Development is up nearly 700 percent in the same period of time. Now, ASDV starts trading on a split-adjusted basis today. Based on Friday's closing price, when you take that split into account, the deal actually puts about $20 premium per share on ASDV. There you see that price, in the last year, up nearly 700 percent. So, basically, the deal values ASDV at about $114 and change per share. The stock on a split-adjusted basis finished at about $85 on Friday. So this deal expected to close in the third quarter and is expected to prompt lots of activity in each stock today. Speaking of activity, you can't get much lower than limit down on the Nasdaq 100 futures. They're down 82 points, and that follows a barely eked out new record on Friday, the Nasdaq finishing at 5,048. So we are looking for some sharp declines, at least at the open today, David and Deb, if the futures hold.</s>MARCHINI: All right. Thanks a lot, Sasha.
i2 Technologies to Buy Aspect Development in 9.3 Billion B2B Deal