The Evercore Partners team advising software giant Dell on its latest acquisition is being led by Eric Mandl, an ex-technology banker at UBS who joined the US investment bank two months ago to the day.

Dell said in a statement yesterday that it had agreed to acquire Force10 Networks, a US company that specialises in networking for data centres. Financial terms were not disclosed but Dow Jones VentureWire, citing two people familiar with the matter, reported that Dell will pay $700m in cash.