Microsoft Behind SCO Cash Investment?

An anonymous reader writes "eWEEK has got a story up suggesting Microsoft may be behind yesterday's $50mil cash investment in SCO. 'As an investment firm, BayStar leads, creates and participates in a number of PIPEs (Private Investments in Public Equity). Many of these deals involve investment money from other companies, including Microsoft.'"

Comments

And BayStar Capital

[A nonymous Coward]

There are two investors; BayStar Capital is the other one, and they are an investment house. Even if you could get a list of BayStar's investors, no doubt those are also investment houses, and trying to track down any M$ investment would take a lot of poking. Especially if they are private, not public, companies ...

Look at it this way. Anyone with a brain knows that this $50M is not an investment, because an investment expects a return on investment. You may be able to find a few nutso small time investors who believe every press release they see and buy stock just in case, but those people generally don't have $50M.

The only other reason to spend $50M is to get product in return. All SCO has to offer is its lawsuits against Linux. Now think, who would have use for such a product? So far, two license buyers have shown up, Sun and Microsoft. Sun has already been certified as being immune to the SCO infringement claims. Microsoft just dumped another $8M into SCO for an enhanced license, which is just as useless to them as the previous license purchase.

There may be no proof that Microsoft is behind the $50M, but it looks like a pretty good first approximation.

Re:And BayStar Capital

[roystgnr]

I wonder what you'll say when SCOX goes up another 30% and these capitalists make out like crazy.

That they found an even bigger bunch of idiots. And if those idiots can sell up 60%, then they'll have found an even bigger bunch of idiots. It would be great to be in one of the earlier groups, sure, but there's just too much of a risk that the stock will be in your hands when nobody else will want to play, and then you'll be stuck with a crashed stock in an insolvent company as your "Biggest Idiot" prize.

If you want more details, I suggest researching a recent event known as the "dot com bust", which you appear to have managed to sleep through.

Re:Another biased Slashdot article

[Penguinshit]

But BayStar's McGrath again stressed that Microsoft was not an investor in this deal. But he did point out that the fact that Microsoft had done business with SCO was seen as a positive when BayStar was looking at SCO as a potential good business and good investment.

Let's see... zero sales revenue/growth/planning, an entire profit projection based SOLELY on a rather speculative lawsuit based itself on evidence the plaintiff refuses to divulge, but oh yeah, Microsoft immediately bought one of their licenses (and to date is one of only two or three who have) so it must be a good business investment. Never mind that Microsoft is one of the larger players in Baystar's portfolios.

You may be Overly Critical Guy, but you are frequently more like Underly Logical Guy.

Drug dealers and terrorists aren't the only people who "launder" money.. This certainly continues to smell like a Microsoft circus act.