The hedge fund Elliott Associates said Tuesday afternoon that it had made an offer to buy Novell in a deal that valued the business software company at about $2 billion. Elliott said it would pay $5.75 a share in cash for Novell, a price that is 21 percent higher than Novell's closing stock price on Tuesday.

New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates L.P. in a letter to Novell’s board of directors dated March 2 offered to purchase the infrastructure software company for a cash price of $5.75 per share, or $1 billion net of the cash on the company’s books.

The company received what they call an "unsolicited proposal from Elliott Associates, L.P. to acquire the Company for $5.75 per share in cash," which values the company at just under $2 billion.

Elliott Associates, the hedge fund that’s seeking to acquire Novell and SUSE Linux, is denying a report that it plans to break up Novell and sell off the pieces. Hmmm… But I still wonder: Will Novell and Elliott Associates reach a buyout agreement in time for Novell BrainShare? Here's some speculation.

Elliott Associates has filed with the SEC its own required filing, a 13D/A with all the financing documents behind the Novell acquisition by Attachmate. It says it amends a February 12, 2010 13D, which shows Elliott through its various tentacles beginning to buy Novell stock on the open market in January. First, who are all the Elliott entities?

Novell's CEO on Saturday notified customers that the open source software company has rejected hedge fund Elliott Associates' roughly $2 billion bid to take it private.

It's rutting season for Novell's Ron Hovsepian and Elliott Associates' Singer as the company keeps diminishing but wants to be valued more generously

First up, no one at Novell is going to want to be acquired by Elliott. Why? Because Elliott will almost certainly want to break Novell up and sell the pieces.

There's nothing like starting a technical conference, like Novell's BrainShare, off with a bang. Or, in this case telling Elliot Associates' unwelcome offer of not quite $2-billion for the company that Novell has no interest in selling out, not for that little anyway.