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Half of SCO's Accountants Quit
Groklaw Reader writes "Apparently, SCO's lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO's finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what's about to happen to SCO."
Good!
Half the accountants? How about some of the lawyers too?
I guess the rats are leaving the ship.
Heck, the accountants probably know that there is no money to pay themselves. So, why work?
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?
Once they hit chapter 7, as the money runs out, the court will dismember them. Hopefully, the assets they do have end up with IBM.
I'm not so sure about Novell's alignment in the open source world yet.
But even better is this:
If one of their accounting people was a CPA- they could be in deep do do if
there are problems found.
I know this, I'm watching a corporation pull the bond out from under a CPA right
now. The liabilities are incredible and the end game is scary.
Maybe an accountant will have damaging information heh?
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Something I have not seen mentioned yet is whether SCO needs to accrue an estimate of what they should be paying Novell - whether they have the cash or not, it needs to go on the books. Their current balance sheet does not reflect it, which is probably one reason why the company is still grossly overvalued at $4.72M.
Seriously, what about the other half? Do they have some sort of personal reality distortion field?
Darl can totally turn this thing around. Just you watch. It's just another minor setback. They'll be vindicated - just you see. Soon as they get over this small bump, they'll start raking in the cash from all those UNIX licenses that they're going to get from every single Linux user out there. Just as soon as...
Ok, a joke's a joke but I can't type anymore. My fingers started spontaneously bleeding.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Groklaw says they started with seven accountants. "Approximately half" is either 3 or 4, and I'd wager that they would have said "more than half" if it were 4. Two of them were the 10-year veterans who resigned, leaving just one guy who was fired.
I think the biggest worry I have now... which may actually be moot- is who ends up with SCO's assets and IP?
What assets and ip?
FalconShould there be a Law?
In my experience, when the accountants pack up their stuff, then you should trample them on the way out, cause you are likely not going to get paid for that month - Better to start your job search early than wait for the bouncing salary cheque...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I just happened to pick up other traits geeks don't seem to have.
Sanctimoniousness, for one.
-- Alastair
They will probably be trying for two things:
- SCO's attempt at chapter 11 gets rejected on the grounds of bad faith. groklaw post
- Even if they don't get chapter 11 pitched, they want the trial in Utah un-stayed.
Given SCO's record, it seems likely that Novell will succeed. Given a checklist for bad faith in bankruptcy, SCO meets most of the criteria.It seems to me that SCO's bankruptcy petition is a bit of a Hail Mary pass attempt. I'm not sure what else they were supposed to do though. Their goose has been cooked for quite a while and they have been doing a masterful job of putting off the final resolution as long as possible.
I work in IT at a small company that uses SCO unix on some servers. We configured a new server and had to buy another license about six months ago. (Don't shun me. We also have several linux servers, but this one needed SCO.)
I was on the phone with our vendor and said to him, "We may be the last people to ever buy this."
He replied, "You're probably right."
Anybody who invests in a company without doing some basic research (I'm not talking hard stuff here, just the first page of google results) is asking to lose their investment.
And SCO is a penny stock at this point, nobody who is sane and worried about their life savings invests in those.
Remember, the correct response is not "Gee, I bet that's a nice ship now that all the rats have left".
--Joe
Who counted them?
SCOX had seven people in the accounting department. 3 were terminated or resigned. SCOx's problems are obvious enough not to blow this all out of reason and make it sound like a thundering cavalcade ran for the door. The truth about SCOx and Darl is quite bad enough without inflating the facts. That's a SCOx tactic, and one we need not indulge in since SCOx does it so well.
Not that I am a SCOx supporter. Far from it. I think Novel should go after Darl in his own natural person to recover court costs. And if Darl dies while I'm still able to get around, count on it that I'll fly to his grave site to relieve myself on it. Twice. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well.
A more damming metric would be to quote how many engineers SCO had on staff, vs. how many SCOx retained. Answer: Not many! SCOx has allowed their product to lag behind hardware to the point that the OS is irrelevant on modern hardware. It simply doesn't work on the new stuff, and doesn't support many current technologies. That's a death knell for any OS.
SCOx concentrated on a niche market, and they didn't pick it any too carefully. That SCOx finds themselves bypassed and disfavored is a mark of just how badly they chose to grow. It's never pretty when a technology company chooses to become a litigation company, it's even worse when they choose the wrong technology to litigate against.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Maybe this image that I saw on Groklaw will be an indication of things to come....
http://www.yourfilehost.com/media.php?cat=image&file=Darl.jpg
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
I guess a company can still be listed on NASDAQ even though it's bankrupt!
Years ago I worked for a law firm that specialised in things like mergers and acquisitions. They also did a lot of bankruptcy work.
One of their clients was a large company that was mired in Chapter 11 proceedings and was, from the perspective of the general public, doomed to extinction. The attorneys came up with a plan for the company to raise money (and expand their business) by issuing new stock which, unsurprisingly, sounds as bizarre as it is illegal. A few months later (and many letters back and forth from the SEC), the company did just that. They ended up raising just under $40 million, and the law firm earned not only their own extravant fees, but bonuses for arranging that deal and the ones that followed.
The company no longer exists today, but if there's any lesson to be learned from this, it's that the subjects of law and finance are more complex than what you read in the newspapers. If there's money to be made, you can be sure someone will be walking away with some of it, even in SCO's case.
There is no legal downside to owing the stock, but getting it in the form of certificates would cost more than the 22 cents each share is worth. Normally, shareholders leave the shares on deposit with a broker. A year or two ago someone on the Yahoo board itemized the cost of having stock certificates issued, and I seem to remember it being something like $40/certificate. If you had 100 shares, you would normally receive one certificate for the shares, although you could request multiple certificates for a total of the 100 shares.
These shares are not worth the paper they are printed on.
Back in the day, my accounting 410 prof told us that it is a common tactic in troubled financial times to fire your accountants, and then have your lawyer hire them back. That way, management's interactions with them become privileged communication, and not admissible in court. Perhaps the Country Lawyer could weigh in on this.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
"While we're waiting, help yourself to some more stock options"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A very smart accountant I knew once deliberately left a good job in a successful company to go and work for a company that was in the UK equivalent of Chapter 11 (voluntary arrangement with creditors.) He reckoned that the experience would accelerate his career. How many companies do you think get into trouble every year? How much of a premium do you think they are prepared to pay to accountants who know how to deal with that stuff? When the shit is really deep, that's when you are prepared to pay a lot of money to the guy with big rubber boots and a large pump.
Pining for the fjords