Novell Rejects "Inadequate" $2B Takeover Bid 111
alphadogg writes "Novell's CEO wrote to customers Saturday telling them that the software company has rejected a $2 billion bid by hedge fund Elliott Associates to take it private. He called the offer 'inadequate' and said Novell will review alternatives. Novell has struggled financially even as it has reinvented itself from its NetWare network operating roots into an open source (SUSE and Ximian) and management and security software company. Revenue fell 10% during its most recent fiscal year (wrapped up in October) and its net losses widened. CEO Hovsepian's total compensation fell 17% to $5.7 million."
First takeover post! (Score:1, Insightful)
I now own 20% of all first posts!
Good move by Novell's part (Score:5, Insightful)
These days most private equity firms are basically vultures - I offer case in point, Chrysler Corporation. They buy out a firm, gut it, wreck it, and then try and unload a few pieces. Rarely does a private equity firm actually ever improve that which it buys.
Re:Because they're idiots. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm not surprised (Score:1, Insightful)
On the other hand, one of the reasons why so many people abandoned SuSE was the fact that Novell did the deal with Microsoft. Few people who care about the future of Linux are still willing to give Novell any money. I'm probably just one of many thousands who switched from running SuSE to another distro. Unless they could magically press an "UNDO" button for that deal, they will have as much difficulty selling me ANYTHING as SCO will.
Re:Somewhere... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, liabilities will be paid with by the company's cash, which theoretically will be replaced by next year's operating revenue. However, If Novell were to stop all operations today, it would have to pay the liabilities it already owes (wages, rent, utilities, invoices, etc.) with it's own cash, BEFORE any money would be paid to shareholders. The same is true if they had any debt. Any liabilities listed are for services or products (employee wages, office supplies) that Novell has already received but not paid for.
Correct that liabilities are different from debt, but you still "owe" either one. My point was that saying "one billion cash with no debt" is misleading. If you're talking about cash the company has in terms of its financial health, you have to mention its liabilities as well.
I'm not sure whether or not you meant that shareholder's equity is a liability, but the two are completely different. You don't pay back shareholder's equity, but you DO have to pay back liabilities.
Re:No. (Score:3, Insightful)
Uh, what? First of all, Mac OS X is UNIX - the trademark is not owned by Novell, it is owned by The Open Group and is awarded to any system that is certified as conforming to the latest version of the Single UNIX Specification.
But since you're talking about the UNIX that Novell owns, we're talking about UNIX System V, which was licensed to a lot of people. Novell doesn't have anything like a monopoly on it, because companies like IBM have had it for a long time and been incrementally improving it. I'm not seeing AIX outselling Linux, FreeBSD or Mac OS X, and I wasn't even before the SCO case.
Re:No. (Score:2, Insightful)
One is the concept (and posix interface). I can't think of a single OS from the past 20 years (except classic MacOS and some RT stuff) that isn't heavily influenced by unix/posix here (Windows NT has/had a posix layer). This doesn't do jack shit for novell.
One is trademarked term and certification from The Open Group. OS X, AIX, and Solaris are the only 03 Unix certified OSes, AFAICT. This doesn't do jack shit for novell.
One is the legacy pile of code that novell owns and licenses. Nobody cares about it and it's not worth $4 billion. Oracle will continue to sell Solaris and IBM will continue to sell AIX but that doesn't do jack shit for novell aside from some minor license revenue.