Dell Is Now a Private Company Again 151
Gunfighter writes "StreetInsider.com reports that Dell, Inc. completed its go-private transaction by Michael Dell, Dell's Founder, Chairman and CEO, and Silver Lake Partners, a leading global technology investment firm. Stockholders will receive $13.75 in cash for each share of Dell common stock they hold, plus payment of a special cash dividend of $0.13 per share to stockholders of record as of the close of business on Oct. 28, 2013, for total consideration of $13.88 per share in cash. The total transaction is valued at approximately $24.9 billion."
Michael Dell hoisted with his own petard (Score:5, Interesting)
Not bad (Score:4, Interesting)
Dell has one less thing to worry about: quarterly profits and revenue. This is right thing for struggling or declining companies. "analysts" won't bug them every moth how their market is shrinking and sales declining. Bet employees will feel safer too without threats of layoffs every time they don't meet "expectations"
Will Dell resurrect Project Ophelia? (Score:4, Interesting)
since they are no longer bound to share-holders; and can innovate for the sake of innovation? No need to bow down to MS Overlords and do as they or the so-called markets please. They can afford to lose a billion bucks in chasing their own dreams.
Re:Not bad (Score:2, Interesting)
You're right except for the part about layoffs. Layoffs aren't driven by stock prices, for the most part they're driven by internal numbers. This is how a profitable company can justify laying off workers that just aren't productive or at least productive enough. A company may use their decline in stock value as an outward indicator of why they're laying people off to the public but those decisions were made behind closed doors well in advance of any public knowledge.
A CEO and his board don't wake up one morning to a drop in stock price and scream "we need to lay people off, NOW!!" It's a bit more sophisticated than that even if you don't agree with the layoffs.
Re:Only one more step left... (Score:5, Interesting)
Their "Hey, let's sell a confusing selection of increasingly antique PPCs in beige cases for increasingly risible prices, on the strength of our mostly-obsolete OS" strategy wasn't going anywhere, and would only have gotten worse as time went on (The price/performance of Wintels was improving, the sheer nastiness was decreasing (remember the good old days before bootable ATAPI CD drives and other basics? That's the kind of shit that made Apple's tendencies toward SCSI seem classy rather than merely expensive), and Apple's in-house attempt to modernize Classic MacOS was a miserable failure).
Your tax dollars at work (Score:5, Interesting)
Going "private", right. The money supposedly comes from Silver Lake Venture Partners. But they don't have $24 billion. Most of it is borrowed. From banks. Which borrow it from the Fed at very low rates. Which creates Government debt to pay for it.
"Private equity" today is really equity to debt conversion. With interest rates so low, that's very attractive to management.
This is "quantitative easing" at work.
Re:Only one more step left... (Score:4, Interesting)
We'll have to see the direction he chooses to take the company now. As I understand it, before "Dude, you're getting a Dell!", Dell was actually known for making fairly good systems for a major brand. I remember working for CompUSA in the late 90s, and any Dell system we sold was required by them to go through a lengthy systems diagnostic process before being released to the customer. And some of their LCD monitors are known as being among the best. (Everyone raves about the U3011, etc.)