The companies announced their engagement in October, when Dell agreed to buy the massive storage, cloud virtualization and security company for about US$67 billion. That kicked off a "go-shop" period in which EMC asked for alternative bids to make sure it wasn't selling itself short. The period ended early Saturday morning with no other offers received or deemed better than Dell's.
This clears the way for the deal to close as scheduled some time between May and October next year, assuming regulators and EMC shareholders approve.
To prepare for the deal, Dell is also looking to sell off Perot Systems for more than US$5 billion, according to a report on Monday by Recode. That deal might offset some of the debt that Dell plans to take on for the huge EMC purchase, the biggest buyout in IT history.
Dell has talked to several potential buyers, including Tata Consultancy Services in India, Atos in France, IT services company Genpact in New York, and Canadian IT company CGI, but hasn't found a buyer, Recode said, citing unnamed sources. Dell did not respond to a request for comment.
As a privately held company since 2013, Dell has more flexibility than publicly held rivals like IBM and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to adapt its organization for a big change like acquiring EMC. But the company still has hard work ahead to make the deal a winner. EMC is a federation among the company's traditional storage business, the RSA security division, Pivotal in the cloud services and big data business, and VMware, which will remain publicly traded.