McNealy: Sun is not for sale... unless he gets $17.4bn in cash

Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun, has hit out at suggestions that his company is an acquisition target.

Speaking at a news conference after his address at Sun's JavaOne conference in San Francisco, he made a point of scotching the persistent rumours, claiming he would only settle for an all-cash deal, which makes the chances of a sale - given Sun's market capitalisation of $17.4bn - very remote.

McNealy said the price tag should be enough to ward off any suitors.

"I'm going to not vote for anything but an all-cash offer," he said. "How many non-convicted monopolists can afford that kind of cash? This is not some two-bit fly-by night outfit that you can pick up with spare change."

While many claim Sun is in a increasingly precipitous position, McNealy took advantage of the conference to refocus the industry on some of his company's recent achievements.

Most notably, Sun signed deals under which the top two PC makers, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, will ship Sun's up-to-date Java on all their desktop and laptop computers.

"I believe the HP and Dell announcements this week are really stunners," McNealy said. "Already, they're creating a very interesting domino effect, with all the other PC manufacturers needing to understand they're going to need to bundle J2SE," he said, referring to the desktop version of Java, called Java 2 Standard Edition.

News.com's Stephen Shankland contributed to this article