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Novell, Dell Face Delisting From NASDAQ
narramissic writes to tell us that Novell has confirmed receiving a delisting notice from the NASDAQ stock exchange, after the software company delayed filing its most recent quarterly report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Dell is in the same position. Both companies, and others including Apple, are grappling with investigations of the way they issued stock options and — in Dell's case — other accounting irregularities. Both companies are appealing the delisting, which means they won't vanish from the stock exchange anytime soon. NASDAQ rules require listed companies to announce the receipt of a delisting notice.
You'd be surprised. I work for a software company that currently supports software that's been in the field for 20 over years (between acquisitions and people refusing to upgrade). I would say easily, more than 30% of the clients I work with still deal in a Novell Environment. This is analagous to those clients that are still in Windows 95 (and quite often are one and the same). If it ain't broke, why fix it?
that can get mired down any number of ways.
This issue is very serious. The Senate Finance Committee recently held an investigative session on stock option backdating chaired by Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The upshot was -- of course -- to continue investigating the matter further. A video ( rtsp://video.c-span.org/15days/e090606_finance.rm ) of the investigatory session has been posted by C-SPAN, and is well worth watching for anyone interested in corporate financial shenanigans to illicitly increase executive compensation.
For those uninitiated with the process, stock option backdating is a form of option fraud whereby options which should be dated at time B (when the executive was hired, for example) but are instead backdated time A (when they are 'in the money') to insure a profit for the executive. It's crass and obviously illegal.
Watch the video and you'll enjoy seeing our representatives (on both sides of the isle) enjoying a collegial and humorous discussion on the record with those who should have been asked numerous uncomfortable questions about the practice. There are, fortunately, some very pointed questions. But the session often comes off as a giveaway to the witnesses, with senators and witnesses often laughing together at in-jokes.
If you're bothered by stock market insiders fraudulently diverting profits to their friends instead of keeping the market fair and clean, this committee session will make your blood boil.
They are still around. We use them here at the New Mexico Child, Youth and Family Development Department. It's actually one of the main reasons we managed to convince our management to go open source. Novell bought SuSE Linux, and we got 50 free SuSE Linux Enterprise Server licenses with full support. Now most of our back end stuff runs on SuSE. We still use Novell file and print servers, though.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Novell simply did not file some paperwork by the deadline because Novell is still working on stats related to awarding stock options.
Once they get those stats straight and file the paperwork, they'll be back in compliance and out of delisting danger (from this issue).
If Dell didn't have a monopoly, we'd have to choose from among IBM Thinkpads, iBooks, HP Pavillions, and who-knows-what else.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Novell still has a lot of great software. I think they have the best webmail interface, although it's free Hula is a free version of Novell's NetMail. If I was implementing a webmail solution right now I would definately lean towards Novell's NetMail w/ eDirectory.
The issue of how to represent stock options (i.e., the *option* for an employee to buy stock at some pre-determined rate that may be below the market price, and may or may not be redeemed for stock) on a balance sheet is a difficult, and often debated one. Standards about how to represent them on a balance sheet have changed recently, and it's understandable about how there would be errors here. Even Apple screwed up this way (can't find the link, but it was on slashdot a month or so ago).
Why not focus on the REAL crime in accounting: the handling of pensions and health care obligations? For decades they were allowed to basically say, "hey, when it comes time to pay you, trust us, we'll have new revenues, and we'll pay you out of that". By not putting these obligations on the balance sheet now, millions of workers' pensions are at risk, and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation may go bankrupt as corporations try to shuck defined benefit plans (which are stupid anyway, but I digress). For GM and I'm sure several others, the present value of these obligations would more than cancel out their entire book value, i.e., the nominal value of all assets they hold. Oops!
And this isn't about some high-paid employees getting a little extra cash. This is about *retirement money*. And they're still allowed to hide the true cost of these things.
Someone's priorities are out of order...
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Except Windows 95 is really broken. Trust me on that! Netware, on the other hand, is pretty solid (except for 4.11 out of the box. That thing needed a few patches).
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
VA Linux faced a NASDAQ delisting in 2001, due to their penny-stock status (3 months of a closing price under $1.00 leads to delisting). NASDAQ gave everybody a 3-month repreive following the 9/11 bombings, by which time they managed lay off most of their employees, stop hemoraging cash, and escape delisting.
Oddly enough, that wasn't "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters" -- it was -1 troll. I wonder if it still is :)
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If the battery goes off...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
To be clear, Apple is conducting their own internal investigation, but is not under investigation by the SEC or any other third party. They have not received any delisting notices.
Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=2049
Why not focus on the REAL crime in accounting: the handling of pensions and health care obligations? For decades they were allowed to basically say, "hey, when it comes time to pay you, trust us, we'll have new revenues, and we'll pay you out of that". By not putting these obligations on the balance sheet now, millions of workers' pensions are at risk, and the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation may go bankrupt [...]
Why should the government make the companies do that? They do exactly the same thing with Social Security. Just substitute "Federal Treasury" for "Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation".
The fed "borrows" from the Social Security "trust fund", substituting special treasury bonds with ridiculously low interest rates, and these bonds are NOT included in the national debt calculation. Then the fed spends the money - which will eventually have to be made up from other taxes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It could be a good thing: This will probably drive their stock price down quite a bit. If they hire you, any options you get will be set that much lower. After this all blows over, the price will recover and you collect the difference.
The actual thing that should make you rethink your interview is their almost uninterrupted history of marketing blunders over the past 15 years.
I also work with some companies that don't get rid of software and I have a a few hundred clients still using ccmail, yep ccmail. And a bunch of those on Novell 3/4 servers (yep 3.12 still survives). It aint broke and they havent fixed it, but at some time I keep telling them those servers will finally go down and they will break and they will have to fix it.
Example, have one client running a ccmail network on a NT cluster on servers that have to be 1996? That is an example of how to run a network on 5 cents a day. coarse then it breaks and then it costs you $250,000 a day in losses, but some people just don't understand that.
But there isn't any real reason for netware to break. Yes you may have to replace hardware but there really isn't any good reason that server can not run 10 or 20 years. The problems will be getting spare parts.
I find it funny that people think that if it isn't new it must be replaced. As long as you can get replacement parts for the hardware it should be work for a very long time.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
well ok think of it this way.
/Rant
Your a public company, with employees, and stock holders, and various other things that you HAVE TO work to maintain a good corporation for.
You then decide on the risk of using software that IS NOT supported, and in many cases, the company who wrote it is 5-10 years out of business. Now what is the risk of hardware failure when you you probably dont even have all the hardware or software diskettes (CDs werent even used back then) to reproduce the hardware or drivers or software on another server?
ok you accept the risk? Fine its a risk and acceptable, but did you inform the board of directors who might then need to inform all the employees, stockholders, investors, and all of the people who it is their duty to inform, that if the software or hardware goes down, you could lose your XXXX database and that whole business process for XX amount of days and the information might not be recoverable?
Risk is risk and I understand not spending money if the risk is offest by price (say upgrading from Exchange 2000 to Exchange 2003, for alot of people, not worth the cost). BUT if you do not first make an informed decision and only think Money, then do not inform those who also have to take the risk into consideration. Then you are endagering your stockholders or worse your employees might not have a job next week. That is not a risk assessment, that is a person who is endangering a greater group of people. There are many of them out there, in 15 years of consulting i have seen dozens, if not more.
And isn't that the whole gotcha of the Title of this article in the first place? Informing people about how you do things and the decisions you make. Be it giving away stock or maintaining a decade over peice of software or hardware... Have you truely informed and taken a good risk assumption?
You're getting a shareholder lawsuit!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
A significant number of companies are having to restate past and current earnings (the latter is what is causing the delisting notices to go out, because the 10-Q for the most recent ended quarter has to also be restated) so given the situation, the flurry of delisting notices is not surprising. NASDAQ maintains a daily list of companies not in compliance with continued listing requirements; today's list (9/21) had about 70 or so companies delinquent on their quarterly or annual reports (10-Q and 10-K) to the SEC. Most of the other companies don't meet the minimum $1 bid price (a company's shares trading below $1 for more than thirty days are served a notice of intent to delist, and have 180 days to come back into compliance.
Other reasons that could result in a delisting letter from NASDAQ include failure to maintain:
Other notable companies that face delisting include nVidia, Autodesk, BEA Systems, CNET, Verisign, and the Cheesecake Factory. The reason? Delinquent 10-K or 10-Q filings.