Websense’s senior management is expected to remain in place after the acquisition is completed. Under terms of the agreement, a subsidiary of Vista will commence a tender offer for all outstanding shares of Websense. If the tender does not meet a minimum (unspecified) number of shares tendered, Vista and Websense will complete the transaction in a one-step merger, following shareholder approval.

Four of six Internet security companies are showing share price gains for the past 12 months. The biggest gainer is Vasco Data Security International Inc. (NASDAQ: VDSI), up nearly 22%, followed by Sourcefire Inc. (NASDAQ: FIRE), up about 8.5%; Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW), up about 6%; and Websense, up nearly 4%. Fortinet Inc. (NASDAQ: FTNT) and CheckPoint Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CHKP) have both posted declines in the past year.

The trick for these firms is either to get their noses into the federal government trough or to persuade private firms that they need better security given the increasing number of attacks.

Websense shares are up about 28.3% in the premarket this morning, at $24.67, well above the 52-week range of $12.70 to $19.36.

The new Buffett holdings are below.

American Express Co. (NYSE: AXP) was roughly 151.6 million shares, SAME AS last quarter.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (NYSE: BK) was almost 19 million shares, which appears to be slightly lower but it had been raised before. What matters here is that it remains a substantial holding still.

Chicago Bridge & Iron Co. (NYSE: CBI) was a NEW POSITION at just over 6.5 million shares worth over $400 million.

Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) was more than 400 million shares due to the stock split of 2012, but this is virtually the SAME AS BEFORE.

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP) is the SAME POSITION at 24.1 million shares, but this is lower than in prior quarters.

Costco Wholesale Corp. (NASDAQ: COST) was the SAME POSITION at 4,333,363 shares.

DaVita Inc. (NYSE: DVA) was a LARGER POSITION and already more than a 10% stake and we recently saw that Berkshire Hathaway had entered into a standstill agreement not to buy more than 25% of the company after already having increased its stake recently. This was listed as 14.97 million shares as of March 31 versus 13.6 million shares before.

Deere & Co. (NYSE: DE) was the SAME POSITION at roughly 4 million shares.

DirecTV (NASDAQ: DTV) was HIGHER YET AGAIN at 37.275 million shares versus almost 34 million shares and that was also higher than before.

Gannett Co. (NYSE: GCI) was the SAME POSITION of 1.74 million shares.

General Electric Corp. (NYSE: GE) is listed as the SAME POSITION at 588,900 shares, but this is still way down from prior reports.

General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM) is the SAME POSITION at 25 million shares, but this was previously up from smaller positions.

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) is the SAME POSITION at 1.51 million shares.

Despite the Carl Icahn efforts to force a higher price, Dell’s buyout now looks capped at $13.65 rather than floored at $13.65. You have to assume that the earnings results are going to be very weak on Thursday. Still, Michael Dell will face a serious fight on his hands if he were to lower his $13.65 share price buyout offer. His board has been in support of his offer from the start, but pulling out would almost certainly force his board of directors to stage a coup.   That being said, investors just do not expect that a higher buyout is coming here.

Carl Icahn looks like he wet the bed here thinking he could just muscle his way into Dell to force a higher buyout or to force a recapitalization that would leave a large portion of the company public. Remember when we warned you about the activist investor bubble? Now it looks like holders of the Icahn Enterprises, L.P. (NASDAQ: IEP) units under Carl Icahn could lose some of those big profits if Icahn remains unable to shake Michael Dell into working a better deal.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is still tentatively involved in a preferred share of sorts, but The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX) backed away when it witnessed the decline of the trends in the PC business.

Dell shares are trading at $13.47, some 1.33% under the $13.65 per share buyout price. That leaves very little room for the so-called merger arbitrage investors who take the risk that a deal cannot close.

Dell shares are up 33% in 2013. Rival shares in Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) are up by 48% so far in 2013. H-P is in a turnaround and is too large to be acquired, yet Dell’s turnaround and buyout only have the stock up by about two-thirds as much as that of H-P.

The IQ Merger Arbitrage ETF (NYSE: MNA) is betting on the Dell buyout and has about 7% of its assets in the fund. Its investors are hoping that all remains well with the Dell buyout after earnings. With a discount of only 1.3% or so, Wall Street’s vote is that Michael Dell is going to close the deal originally proposed and not for a single cent higher.

Goldman Sachs is said to be the sole underwriter in the registered public offering. The firm proposed to offer these common shares for sale from time to time in one or more transactions. These transactions may take place on the New York Stock Exchange, in the over-the-counter market, through negotiated transactions or otherwise at market prices prevailing at the time of sale. These can be at the market sales or can be at negotiated prices, subject to receipt and acceptance by it and subject to its right to reject any order in whole or in part.

The closing bell price prior to this share sale was $24.96 per share, and shares are down only 1.1% at $24.68. Hertz has seen a 52-week trading range of $10.22 to $25.00. This stake appears to be worth close to 12.3% of the entire share count, and the company’s market cap is roughly $9.9 billion.

Hertz investors are probably thanking their luck stars that the drop in Hertz stock was not worse.

On a separate note, Hertz Corporation has announced that the company will relocate its global headquarters to Estero, Fla. (near Bonita Springs and Fort Myers) from Park Ridge, N.J. Hertz said that it made this relocation decision following its recent acquisition of the Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group.

The company said:

Starting this year, up to 700 jobs will be relocated to Florida over a two-year period. More than 2,000 Hertz and Dollar Thrifty personnel will remain in New Jersey, including approximately 150 employees who currently work in Park Ridge. All other Park Ridge employees will be able to retain their current positions at the new headquarters, scheduled to be completed in early 2015. Hertz was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1918, and moved its headquarters to New Jersey from mid-town Manhattan in 1988.

On a GAAP basis, Herbalife’s EPS totaled $1.10, which excludes a $0.10 per share impact related the devaluation of Venezuela’s currency and a $0.07 negative impact related to the cost of “responding to attacks on the Company’s business model.”

Those attacks, of course, were launched last December by William Ackman of Pershing Square Capital Management, and pit Ackman against activist investor Carl Icahn, who has amassed a healthy long position in Herbalife.

The company’s CEO said:

We continue to deliver record results in sales and profitability as our independent distributors successfully execute numerous growth strategies that enable deeper market penetration, developing customers using our weight management and targeted nutrition products every day.

The important thing about Herbalife’s earnings are the reactions by the short seller (Ackman) and Icahn and the rest of the long investors. Herbalife’s numbers almost don’t matter, as we noted earlier today in our preview of the company’s earnings.

The outcome is almost entirely in the hands of federal regulators. If one or another federal agency opens an investigation into Ackman’s charges that Herbalife is a pyramid scheme, that could effectively destroy the stock price. If no investigation is forthcoming, Herbalife presumably can continue operating as it now does.

Herbalife shares closed at $38.75 today against a prior 52-week trading range of $24.24 to $72.99. Shares are unchanged in after-hours trading. Thomson Reuters had a consensus analyst price target of around $58.10 before today’s report. That target price has fallen $5 a share since Herbalife reported fourth quarter earnings.

Carl Icahn owns Dell shares, but he may have neither the capital nor inclination to take over the company. He has said he would set a proxy fight, which means he will try to gain seats on the board. However, if Michael Dell remains chief executive officer and keeps his 14% ownership, Icahn’s efforts might be useless.

Without Blackstone, the way may be open for the Michael Dell group to close a buyout deal quickly.

The Financial Times wrote about the Blackstone bid for Dell:

Blackstone has abandoned its $25bn offer for Dell after weeks of due diligence, people familiar with the matter said.

The withdrawal follows reservations expressed by Blackstone’s private equity fund investors on the merits of the deal, and concerns that the stock market had already valued Dell fairly, these people said.

There were also concerns among Blackstone management about the ability to withdraw from a Dell investment profitably, they added. Dell shares last night closed at $13.95, valuing the group at $24.4bn.

Lead underwriters were listed as Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch. The company sold just over 19.3 million shares, versus the 21.7 million shares previously projected. Its price went off at $18 per share, and that was under its expected range of $21 to $25 per share we originally tracked.

Obviously the increased volatility in the equity and risk-based markets have thrown a wrench into the IPO market. At least that is the case for a leveraged satellite player backed by private equity, where the net proceeds will only pay down a small portion of a very large debt burden. We could not help but notice that Intelsat had almost $16 billion worth of debt on its balance sheet. Also, that it was trading at about eight times EBITDA, and that after losing $151 million in 2012 and losing $434 million in 2011. Revenue was up less than 1% in 2012 to $2.61 billion.

Intelsat has a fleet of more than 50 satellites. It serves about 1,500 customers in telecom, government, media and data markets. Those satellites are tied into terrestrial infrastructures via teleports and fiber optic networks.

The company also sold a concurrent public offering of 3,000,000 Series A mandatory convertible junior non-voting preferred shares at a price of $50.00 per share. BC partners and Silver Lake Partners were the private equity firms behind Intelsat. The good news is that investors jumped on a weak opening price of $17.00. Now the stock is up almost 6% to $19.10, with more than 5 million shares trading hands.

Under today’s deal, Icahn has agreed to limit his stake in Dell to 10% of the firm’s shares in exchange for the right to contact other shareholders whose stakes do not exceed 15% of Dell about making a possible bid for the company. Icahn had suggested that he may bid $15 a share for a controlling stake in Dell, well above the offer from founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners to take the company private for $13.65 a share.

A third offer of more than $14.25 a share for a controlling interest is being led by Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE: BX).

What both Dell and Icahn get from today’s deal is a stabilization of Dell’s share price, which should keep the stock from falling back to its level of less than $11 a share shortly before the offer from Dell and Silver Lake. If Icahn cannot put together a deal, then the original bid still looks good to shareholders and yields a bargain price to the buyers. If Icahn can put together a better offer, Dell shareholders get a bonus.

Either way, shareholder lawsuits could evaporate because the company has said it is open to an offer better than the one it already has on the table.

Shares of Dell are up about 0.4% today at $14.10 in a 52-week range of $8.69 to $16.61.

The latest is from Reuters calling that two different buyout groups from private equity are readying their bids for April 22 to take the Houston-based software player over. Again, this buyout has been discussed and rumored on and off for years.

We would caution above and beyond any rumors that this actual merger and sale process has been around for some time. Bloomberg covered it in detail in early March and Reuters again reported about it in late March. Activist investors have been after the company to seek a sale back in 2012 and even the CEO commented about customer concern over deals earlier in 2013.

If one software company may be the next to go, this one sounds as though a deal is closer than ever. BMC shares are up 1.7% at $45.54 with a $6.5 billion market cap and the 52-week range is $35.48 to $47.98. The stock trades cheap on an earnings multiple basis for a buyout candidate at less than 13.5-times earnings, although it has debt that some peers have not had.

The options market is not calling for any mega-premium buyout here. If you look at the May-2013 Calls at the $46 strike, these are priced at $1.70 per contract. That only implies a buyout price of $47.70 for the stock.

Stay tuned.

Graduating magna cum laude from Harvard in 1988, and receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1992, Ackman fits the East Coast, buttoned-down hedge fund manager style. Prematurely gray and always impeccably dressed, he has a calm demeanor that often has seemed to further his investment thesis and strategy. Nevertheless, Ackman has thrived on drama, and he has never been shy about using the media to his advantage.

His first hedge fund, Gotham Partners, was wound down in 2002 after a big bet on a golf course venture turned sour and investors asked for their money back. An attempt to salvage the investment failed when shareholders won a lawsuit preventing Ackman from merging a real estate company with the bleeding golf course company. Gotham Partners had gained notoriety in an attempt to purchase New York City landmark Rockefeller Center.

In 2002, Ackman began the herculean task of determining, and then proving, that bond insurer MBIA (NYSE: MBI) was guaranteeing untested asset-backed securities. Combing through almost three-quarters of a million pages of financial statements and other documents, Ackman persisted in challenging MBIA’s AAA credit rating for more than five years. So sure of his case against the giant insurer, he got disgraced former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer (who was, at the time, investigating Ackman’s own dealings), to look into MBIA. Eventually Ackman was proven right and MBIA’s stock went down in flames at the height of the mortgage crisis, falling from more than $70 in January of 2007 to less than $3 by February of 2009. Ackman’s large position in credit default swaps proved to be a huge winning trade.

With his reputation as an activist shareholder investor gaining momentum, Ackman formed Pershing Square Capital Management in 2004 with $54 million in personal funds and an investment from his former business partner, real estate firm Leucadia National. Since that time, Ackman has taken large and sometimes very successful positions in Wendy’s Corp. (NASDAQ: WEN), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), Borders Group (which filed for bankruptcy in 2011) and Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. (NYSE: CP).

Ackman reemerged in the public eye with a research report in December of 2012 that was extremely critical of network marketing company Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE: HLF). Herbalife sells weight management, healthy meals and snacks, sports and fitness energy, targeted nutritional products and personal care products worldwide through a network of individual salespeople, many of whom work out of their homes. Founded in 1980, Herbalife has been a controversial company for years, and Ackman was not the first person to assail their multilevel marketing strategy. Calling it a “pyramid scheme” and disclosing a large short position, Ackman got into a well-publicized argument on CNBC with legendary investor Carl Icahn. Icahn chastised Ackman for the practice called “talking your own book,” which literally means discussing your investments in public. Despite Icahn’s protests and outrage, it is a common Wall St. practice. Icahn has since disclosed a large long position in Herbalife, as had hedge fund manager Dan Loeb before him.

The biggest challenge Bill Ackman and his credibility face is the current and looming debacle at iconic American retailer J.C. Penney Co. Inc. (NYSE: JCP). In 2010, in conjunction with Vornado Realty Trust (NYSE: VNO), Ackman began amassing an almost 13% stake in the company. He successfully ousted CEO Mike Ullman and installed former Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) executive Ron Johnson, who had directed the successful introduction and roll-out of the Apple Stores. His attempt to duplicate the Apple store model in making J.C. Penney a “fun place to hang out” where customers would buy items at a full but fair price failed miserably.

For almost three years, Ackman has touted not only the vast value of the J.C. Penney real estate holdings, but also how Ron Johnson would be able to increase overall store sales and make the company a retail powerhouse. The value of the real estate is undeniable. However, the reemergence of J.C. Penney as a force in the retail world looks next to impossible. This past Monday, Ron Johnson was dismissed by the board of directors and replaced by his predecessor Mike Ullman, a strategy investors are very leery of as Ullman was at the controls when the company began its long decline.

Bill Ackman declared early on that Pershing Square Capital could make “15 times its money” if Ron Johnson’s turnaround plans succeeded. It is estimated that the current paper losses for the hedge fund are almost half a billion dollars. Ackman’s multiyear bet on the J.C. Penney turnaround may prove to be one of his costliest blunders ever. With his reputation tarnished and the hedge fund losses mounting while short sellers exploit the debacle, Ackman most likely is looking for an exit strategy. The thought of putting the J.C. Penney investment in a side pocket at Pershing Square is unlikely (side pockets are often used at hedge funds to place poor performing investments).

At the end of the day, Bill Ackman most likely survives this embarrassing episode. Even with the J.C. Penney implosion, Pershing Square returned 6.1% to investors in the first quarter of 2013. John Meriwether, the one-time Wall St. genius who almost collapsed the financial markets when his Long Term Capital Management lost $4.6 billion in less than four months in 1998, still attracts investor money to this day. John Paulson, who made billions shorting the subprime mortgage market, has seen his flagship Advantage Fund hammered by a host of ill-timed investments, yet still has a tremendous amount of investor capital under management.

Wall St., and so-called “sophisticated” investors, seem to forgive and forget pretty quickly. This may be because they are usually in charge of investing other people’s money and not their own. Since you are only as good as your last investment, a wary eye may be cast towards Bill Ackman. Do not think for a moment, though, that the last has been heard from him.