Elliott’s Campaign Against BMC Advances as Company Explores a Sale

5:20 p.m. | Updated

Elliott Management has made strides in its latest activist campaign against a technology company, as BMC Software retained investment bankers to explore a potential sale of itself, a person briefed on the matter told DealBook on Monday.

BMC has hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch to contemplate a number of possibilities, including selling part or all of itself, this person said. The company’s market value is about $6.8 billion, making a potential sale one of the biggest in the technology sector this year.

But the enterprise software maker may decide not to sell itself, this person said.

Representatives for BMC and Elliott declined to comment.

The move by BMC follows months of agitation by Elliott, which has taken on a number of technology companies in recent years in an effort to goad them into significant changes in strategy or management. Those efforts have largely been spearheaded by Jesse Cohn, one of the hedge fund’s top portfolio managers.

Two years ago, Elliott prodded Novell into exploring a deal, which ended in a $2.2 billion sale to Attachmate.

And last year, it began building up a stake in Brocade Communications — at its height, up to 8.5 percent — as it pushed for change. The hedge fund said in a regulatory filing that it supported the decision by Michael A. Klayko to step down as Brocade’s chief executive when a successor is found.

Earlier this year, Elliott took aim at BMC, amassing a 7.7 percent stake and saying that the company was badly lagging competitors and had missed business opportunities like software-as-a-service. Instead, the hedge fund argued in a public presentation, the software maker should consider a sale to any of a number of potential buyers, including bigger industry players like Oracle and private equity firms.

While BMC initially resisted, including by adopting a poison pill plan, it eventually brokered a truce with the activist fund, principally by giving Elliott gained two seats on its board.

Shares in BMC closed up more than 3 percent on Monday, at $42.85, after The Wall Street Journal reported news of the Bank of America hiring.