By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Tech stocks put in a strong trading performance Monday, with the weekend acquisition of SuccessFactors Inc. by SAP AG highlighting the sector’s activity.
SuccessFactors shares rose more than 51% to close at $39.75 after SAP /quotes/zigman/126928/quotes/nls/sap SAP +0.17% said it would acquire the workforce-management and performance software developer for $3.4 billion, or $40 a share, in cash. SAP’s stock fell $1.16 a share to close at $58.38.
Taleo Corp. , one of SuccessFactors top rivals, saw its shares rise $6.54 or almost 20%, to close at $39.50. Among other business-software stocks, Salesforce.com Inc. /quotes/zigman/338061/quotes/nls/crm CRM +1.39% rose more than 4% to $125.01, Oracle Corp. /quotes/zigman/76584/quotes/nls/orcl ORCL +1.92% , was up 2.2% at $31.90 and Tibco Software Inc. /quotes/zigman/65660/quotes/nls/tibx TIBX +1.93% rose more than 4%, to $29.03 a share.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index /quotes/zigman/12633936 COMP +0.97% rose almost 29 points to close at 2,655, while the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index /quotes/zigman/1468249 SOX +1.37% and the Morgan Stanley High Tech 35 Index /quotes/zigman/6015481 MSH +1.09% also advanced.
The sector was also joining in a broad-market rally fueled by reaction to French and German calls for new efforts to solve the problems associated with the euro. Read more about the euro plans of France and Germany.
Gains also came from Western Digital Corp. /quotes/zigman/10322511/quotes/nls/wdc WDC +2.39% , Apple Inc. /quotes/zigman/68270/quotes/nls/aapl AAPL -0.30% , eBay Inc. /quotes/zigman/76117/quotes/nls/ebay EBAY +1.63% , Dell Inc. /quotes/zigman/27952/quotes/nls/dell DELL -0.22% and Red Hat Inc. /quotes/zigman/208092/quotes/nls/rht RHT +0.51% .