This rumor has been off-and-on for years. The internal ABL name for the discussion was Project Jupiter.
The rumor was raised again in early August. Your humble editor reached out to both companies and received the following response from Juno on 5 AUG: “I cannot comment on rumors in regards to what you shared below at this time.” We did not give up and wrote back asking if our contact would pass the information up the chain and see if anyone else would comment. We received the following response: “It was shared, we have no comment on rumors. That’s all I can share. Thanks.”
We worked our back channels at both companies and received no official or unofficial comment. This is a bit unusual. Usually we are either told that we are way off base, or certain hints are dropped that it may be true. In this case none of our private sources at either company would discuss it in any way, shape, or fashion, which made us think there was really something here.
Last night, there was huge chatter from several of our sources. One source even had ABL purchasing another company (not Juno). Today we heard of a pending internal announcement at 3:30 pm EST to discuss strategy.
You can read the official ABL announcement here,
Right now, there is much angst in the rep world….