The civilised world lives three meals away from punching a neighbour for a ham sandwich. In the tech sector, acquisitive behaviour is starting to suggest that stomachs are rumbling.

Hewlett-Packard has announced an agreement to buy networking equipment maker 3Com, for an enterprise value of $2.7bn. The all-cash deal values the group at almost 25 times prospective earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, so shareholder dissent or a competing bid is unlikely. And with only $3.6bn of net debt before this purchase, against a market capitalisation of $118bn, investors in the computer hardware maker were unmoved by HP’s decision to overpay in aftermarket trading.