Dell, Inc. is set to announce a formal takeover offer for rival cloud computing company EMC Corp. later today (Monday).

Re/Code makes the claim on the timing of the announcement, first rumored last week, and puts the takeover figure at above $50 billion, with talks on the deal said to have been conducted directly between Dell Chief Executive Officer Michael Dell and his rival at EMC Joe Tucci.

Reuters also confirms the timing, but adds an interesting twist to the deal, claiming that EMC is also planning to seek out other suitors and has asked for a ‘go-shop’ provision to be included in Dell’s takeover offer that will allow it to solicit bids from alternative parties to see if they can obtain a better deal than that proposed by Dell.

Under the go-stop clause, EMC would be able to shop around between the time the takeover offer is formally made and when it is finalized, and in the event they find a superior suitor Dell would have the option of offering more for EMC or to walk away from the offer with a discounted breakup fee.

The most recent reports of an EMC takeover by Dell first became public October 8, although this isn’t the first time both companies have considered a deal with unsuccessful talks having previously occurred in September 2014.

For Dell, the problem remains one of financing the deal: as SiliconANGLE’s Mike Wheatley explained October 9, Dell is saddled with a large amount debt after becoming a private company in 2013 and has to raise the bulk of the funds required in what is expected to be an all-cash offer; Dell is said to have approached JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc, Bank of America Corp., Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG to raise $40 billion for the buy, with cash at hand being used for the gap between the borrowed sum and acquisition price.

Although it does seem like a lot of debt for Dell to be raising on paper, a successful acquisition would undoubtedly see Dell sell off non-core units at EMC, in particular its 80 percent stake in VMware which as of last week was valued at approximately $27.5 billion based on VMware’s market cap of $34.3 billion; the short version is that Dell would be able to replay a significant portion of the money it has raised to buy EMC within 6-12 months of the deal being finalized.

As of close of trading Friday EMC stock sat at $27.87 valuing the company at $52.31 billion; Dell was expected to offer $27.25 per share so it will be interesting to see whether Dell ups the offer slightly when it is likely formally announced later today.

Update: The crowd took to CrowdChat to weigh in on the deal – see the entire discussion below.