Shares of Symantec Corp., the largest maker of antivirus programs, rose Tuesday on a report that it plans to sell Altiris Inc., a software-management business it acquired for about $830 million in 2007.
Symantec rose 4.7 percent to end at $20.85 after the Wall Street Journal reported that the business is for sale and drawing interest from private-equity firms.
Altiris makes programs that help companies track, install and maintain their software on desktops, laptops, servers and handheld devices. Steve Bennett, the former chief executive officer of Intuit Inc. began running Symantec in July, and his challenge is turning around a company that has failed to keep pace with shifting computer-security threats.
Cris Paden, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Symantec, didn’t immediately have a comment on the report.
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