SiliconBeat

General counsels of several Silicon Valley corporations are in the vanguard of critics railing against changes being proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board “”that would force public companies to disclose more about the risks of litigation,” judging by the sources in this story by Zusha Elinson of the San Francisco Recorder.

“Under the revised rules for FASB Statement No. 5,” Elinson writes, “the threshold for reporting the potential loss from a lawsuit would be lowered from ‘probable’ to Read the rest of this entry »

Synopsys, the Mountain View maker of semiconductor design software, said today it will buy Synplicity of Sunnyvale for $8 a shares, or about $227 million, or $188 million subtracting the cash Synopsys will acquire with the company. The price represented a 50 percent premium to where Synplicity shares closed Thursday before the deal was announced.

Synplicity specializes in tools to help design semiconductors tailored to perform specific function. It made $13.1 million in net profit last year on sales of $71.1 million. Synopsys, netted $130.5 million last year on $1.2 billion of sales. Synplicity’s chief executive, Gary Meyers, will will join Synopsys as a general manager. Its co-founder and chief technical officer, Ken McElvain, will also join Synopsys.

The purchase is the latest in a string of more than two dozen companies Synopsys has bought over the last decade, including former local public companies Avant!,  HPL Technologies, and Nassda.