Adobe repels Quark offer

Quark has revealed it made an offer to buy beleaguered Adobe Systems last week.

The maker of the popular QuarkXPress desktop publishing software said it expressed an interest in buying all or a significant portion of Adobe's common stock at a price above its current trading value. Adobe shares are currently trading near their 52 week low of just over $24, valuing the company at about $1.6bn.

However, in a letter addressed to their smaller rival, John Warnock, Adobe CEO and co-chairman, and Charles Geschke, company president and co-chairman, replied: "We are not interested in pursuing discussions as we continue to focus on the exciting opportunities available to our company, stockholders, employees and customers."

Fred Ebrahimi, Quark's CEO, wrote back saying he was "disappointed and surprised" by Adobe's response. Quark - which said its aim was to "enter into direct friendly negotiations with Adobe" - thus decided to publish the letters. The company said it is urging Adobe to reconsider its decision.

In a statement, Tim Gill, Quark founder and chairman, said: "We believe that some Adobe products would have excellent synergies with our product lines and provide significant advantages to both our companies' customers. Additionally, the combination we have proposed would create considerable value and benefits through the synergies, cost-savings and cross-marketing opportunities realisable only through such a transaction."

Quark said it would have considered divesting certain products to satisfy regulators. Applications such as Adobe's PageMaker compete with QuarkXPress.

Adobe, a stalwart of the software industry, has recently fallen on hard times as it makes the transition to mainly writing for the Windows platform, having always been popular with Apple Macintosh users.

Earlier this month, Adobe announced a third quarter profits warning and company reorganisation, resulting in the loss of up to 300 jobs.