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United Tech Bids $2.6B for Diebold
zhang1983 writes "United Technologies, parent company of jet engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, Otis elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft, said it made the unsolicited offer to Diebold for $2.63 billion on Friday after trying to negotiate a deal for two years.
United Technologies said the company announced the offer Sunday night because executives believe their offer is "so compelling we thought shareholders should know about it.""
When the shareholders come to vote on it, somehow the results won't be quite as expected...
Cheers,
Ian
Buying an election only costs ... how much?
Oh wait. This is just the startup costs... *sigh*
I guess my dreams of world conquest are falling apart around me.
It's probably not about Premier Elections Systems. The companies United Tech are all aerospace and defense contractor. Diebold sells a lot of security systems products and services. It's probably more about that than about the election machines.
My blog
Diebold could be buying Diebold.
Great, give our elections to the Russians.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
2-3 Billion$ ATM business... 100 Million$ Election system business... Why do people think Diebold is primarily election systems-based?
With UT behind it, there will be even more pressure on municipalities to buy the machines.
I can hear it now:
"Buy the machines, or we stop all your elevators, and we turn off all the fire and intrusion alarms!"
Now THAT is a good bargaining chip.
- Buy Diebold
- Elect neo-conservatives
- Get the US into more wars
- Sell lots of military hardware
- Profit!
(no ????-step this time)That is entirely correct. Diebold is one of the key players in the ATM business, as well as being a major provider of banking security equipment. To clarify (since this is slashdot) banking security here refers to safes, cameras, locks, and bulletproof teller windows, not encrypted data on the server or anything. They've also made a significant effort to streamline banking processes in recent times; they've got a fair amount of technology relating to scanning and transmitting financial documents, so as to preclude the need to send the physical document itself.
Elections, despite the notoriety it has caused, is more or less a 'side' business for Diebold, which was probably the result of someone high-up watching the Gore VS Bush Florida recount debacle and saying to himself, "Now THAT [election devices] looks like a growth market right there..." As far as I know, the 'Diebold Election Systems' branch was simply bought and bolted on to the company.
Actually that is far from true. UTC is about as diversified a company as you can find. While known as and still probably slightly tilted in the aerospace/defense side they include such heavy weights as Otis Elevator and Carrier. I think carrier at this point is on par if not greater than even Pratt revenue wise. In fact, if you look over the last 5 years their industrial companies are far outpacing the aero side in annual growth. A good reason why their stock is a pretty good bet, especially in times like these. Sure they won't pull a google, but if you are looking for an almost guaranteed 10%-15% over any given 5 years they are a pretty good bet.
I'm still wary; even security cameras are complex enough to be hacked if the company doesn't know what it's doing.. aka diebold..
George David is elected President. Homeland Security raids GE.
Have I been under a rock, or have there always been this many unsolicited bids being tossed about? Or is it just that the economy is shit right now and the people with money are trying to take advantage of the situation?
Not all divisions of UTI are defense and aerospace contractors. UTI has bought a few companies, Otis Elevator and Lenel Systems Int'l, to name a couple, that have little to do with defense and aerospace.
Diebold has a *very* large access-control installation and service division, which could tie very well into the acquisition of Lenel from a couple years ago.
I thought this was interesting. http://utc.com/press/releases/2008-03-02.htm
I'm not saying anyone did, but an insider would be up 65% plus on the buyout bid news this morning...
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Which would you rather control, a $2.8b company or a $13 trillion economy?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Or do they plan to recoup their investment through ATM fees?
God spoke to me.
Senator John McCain introduces proposal for a multi-year, $50 billion initiative to purchase Sikorsky helicopters for our military.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Open, honest, and arm twisting as hell. There was another typical tactic used in politics (corporate politics too I'm sure) that arm twisted from another angle; I almost cried when I read that one... really disgusting.
This is how I like to see the game played, whether in the big business or politics field or in the social realm. There's too much FUD and crappy threats going on everywhere, or blackmail with deep dark secrets; line the facts up and appeal to the interests of whoever you're trying to control instead. Often times we call this "compromise" or "diplomacy" instead of nasty words like "FUD" or "blackmail."
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After the recent Diebold fiasko, their stock has hit record bottom http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks
Yes, that's why they announced the bid. They've been trying to reach a deal to purchase, and can't get Diebold to agree, so they're going straight to the shareholders.
;-)
Anyway, I've been trying to find a job at UTC for years... they're a great conglomerate (and based nearby). Maybe I can find one at Diebold UTC
-Daniel
So instead of the term diebold catching on as a perjorative, we're going to have to say something like "Damn, Hewlett Packard has pulled a real Pratt & Whitney, Otis Elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft on the public!"
Repeat after me: George Bush does not have a giant lever marked "Economy."
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Errr...where do you live, what do you do? Everyone in the Hartford area pops out of their mother with a UTC or Travelers (or some other insurance company) badge already on.
It's a very TINY handle. And you need to jiggle it in order to get it to flush properly.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
i have personal experience with UT: 1/4century ago i worked for a company that made turbomachinery: compressors & turbines; they built the north-sea gas re-injection compressors, world's highest-pressure centrifugal:-) carrier (the a/c maker) had acquired them in the '50s, and in the early '80s, UT scarfed up carrier & put it under the pratt&whitney division (all rotating compressors)
of course they installed a young tiger(tm) exec from p&w to turn things around in our company...the oil&gas industry was in a slump @ the time & our sales & profits were down. and of course, coming from the cost+plus world of jet engines, y.t.x. declared that we would write no business @ less than x% profit...this @ a time when the competition was selling @ a loss, just to keep orders coming in & the shop employed...
needless to say, we wrote no new business...and profits shot up! in the turbomachinery business, the money's made on parts, service & spares: 140% of our profits came from ps&s, so of course cutting losses (by laying off idled workers)-: immediately improved the bottom line...
and of course when the ps&s dried up in several years, due to the lack of recent sales, profits went south again:-( but of course the y.t.x. had already been handsomely rewarded for his stellar performance & promoted outta there:-(
The Democrats should consider rolling their coins so maybe they can win one.
One election? If the intent is to influence vote counting, one machine can influence all races.
As for the value: the cost of the 2004 presidential election was approximately $1.2 billion and all elections for that season cost approximately $4 billion. $2.63 billion is in the right range.
First Microsoft/Yahoo, then EA/Take-Two, and now UTC/Diebold. Are there always this many unsolicited take overs going on, or for some reason are these being more publicized than most? Is a generally depressed stock market causing this, with many companies share prices being undervalued, and in turn provoking some of these offers?
I just can't remember three such high profiles offers being made in such close proximity to each other. Not that I follow the financial markets closely...
I'd agree with you. But you can't mean what I think you do or that would mean I was seeing someone who knows something about economics, for real, from facts, not from feelings or beliefs, on Slashdot. That just can't be. So should I laugh instead?
Speak for yourself.
Diebold expects major ups and downs in the near future.
Maybe they figure that Diebold with offer synergy with their other wannabe shadowy businesses like making silent black helicopters. I live near the Sikorsky plant and they do, in fact, make black helicopters. They will have to work on the silent part, however. These black helicopters are most definitely not silent.
I actually read about this in my local paper Hartford Courant this morning. I don't think the CNN article really does a good job indicating the "hostile" in this hostile takeover. Note the part where Laurer directed UTC not to have further contact with board members.
My impression is that UTC has been getting more heavily into security over the last several years and they are probably more interested the ATM/check machine aspect of Diebold, in spite of Diebold's entanglements with voting machines.
Seems to me that the company dependent on the Pentagon shouldn't have the kind of say in counting votes for office that determine the Pentagon's budget.
Not while their products are closed systems, able to be rigged in secret, anyway.
--
make install -not war
That's all the US needs - overt ownership of election tallying systems by part of the Military Industrial Complex. Yeah, I am sure that the United States should look forward to an era of peace and prosperity.. >:|
Defense budget: Economic growth. Dump money into R&D for things like armor, vision systems (night vision goggles designed for the C4ISR initially), radars, new fuel systems and engines for planes, power storage systems (I could make use of ultra caps in a war zone, trust me)....
NASA: More of the same. Dump cash into space research and suddenly you have non-tube transistors, heat shielding, capri sun packets, CO2 buffers, some toy that uses heated iron to break CO2 down into carbon deposits (scrape this off) and oxygen (breath this). Mind you the R&D labs doing this are spitting out all kinds of technology
FTC: Not exactly the President's job. Controls the lending industry's rates. Higher rates, fewer people able to afford to borrow. Lower rates, border liners can now afford the $700/mo instead of $1100/mo mortgages (this would make or break me; my buffer isn't comfortable on the last $300 there...).
Lower taxes on businesses, dump money into government spending, creates some jobs now, gets things rolling. In 5-10 years the whole economy might reflex, if you hit it hard enough. Something rolling out of control may need taxing or regulation to slow it (dot-com bust?). It's not just the President, and it's not something you turn on and off; the effects of your executive decisions will still be just starting to trickle in at the end of your term.
I'm no economist. The left side of my brain is 100% active and the right side is practically dead. I'm working on fixing that. Just, stuff like this makes a painful amount of plain sense. If you lower taxes by 5% and don't lower spending and the businesses are hiring more employees and contractors and there's 10% more money floating around, you just raised government income tax revenues by 5% overall... and made the economy more active in the process. If you lower taxes by 5% and there's 3% more money floating around, you might have a little budgeting problem....
I'm just sick of people going "look depression look bush's fault look he hasn't fixed it in 2 years look it's still getting worse" damnit people shut up. The president can destroy the budget in 2 months; but if he comes into an awesome economy and it collapses 2 months into his term it's far, far from his fault. Unless he jacks taxes up to double what they currently are, that'll do it; but at this point you're playing Truck Dismount with economics.
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Why on earth would anyone want to buy them? After having repeatedly demostrated nothing but utter incompetence even their name is in negative equity. You'd be better starting a new company rather than try to rebuild the Diebold name.
keep that left brain working then, because honestly, the country will need as many folks like yourself as it can muster ;)
Speak for yourself.
Actually, not true. The largest company in the UTC family is Carrier Corporation, leading maker of HVAC equipment for both the residential and commercial markets. Carrier makes up over 60% of UTC. UTC is approx $25B and Carrier makes approx $15B of that.
I'm working on learning guitar to get both sides of my head working. I have no capacity for creativity, you have no idea how much it sucks. I'm relatively dumb until you put enough facts in front of me to make something trivially obvious to someone who can interpret all the data at once (instead of trying to draw conclusions working in pieces?).
Minesweeper in 3D is pissing me off now so let me get back to that (Mines Perfect...)
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Now, I'm finishing up a law degree. I did work for IBM for 8 years (I'm from Fairfield county).
-Daniel
...I thought when reading the headline without glasses, $2.68 is a fair price for this company, but I bet there are some of us who don't even want to spend more than a dollar on it, given their track record so far.
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
I was just about to comment about that.
Eisenhower was right.
Diebold shouldn't exist.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well that is politics for you. It just don't add up.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
In this case, 2.6B sounds like a real bargain. People point out the actual INCOME from the election systems segment is very small, which is true, but that is not the companies primary VALUE. They are two different things. You aren't just buying a business here, you are buying election outcomes, and that is clearly worth far more than just the raw income numbers or market share points alone indicate.
This is correct. Although I do worry about the fiscal solvency of the federal government due to not taxing enough (or cutting spending enough, but historically "starve the beast" hasn't worked,) the President, either D or R does not have large control over the economy unless something very drastic happens and is not buffered by congress.
Stocked rised to 60% and Diebold just rejected the offer.
I think we may have been set up. Hook, line and sinker.
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
And until about 3 months ago were looking to sell themselves out of it. Election systems were never a money maker for Diebold and conspiracy theories notwithstanding, they have a fairly good record outside of the US. However they don't make much money in it. They also don't spend much money addressing public concerns which in any other venue would make sense, financially. But they're discovering that in the US election systems are like a public trust and require more investment than return.
Diebold's ATM and bank security business $2 billion
Diebold's Other Miscellaneous Businesses $0.6 billion
Ability to control the US's elections... Priceless.
-- QED
This isn't quite true, at least from a revenue aspect. UTC is closer to $50B (#42 in current fortune 100 list), and Carrier, Otis and P&W are currently so close in revenue that it could teeter to either on any given year depending on contract cycles. Probably close to 25% for each.
That being said, 5 years ago P&W was by far the 800lb gorilla of the corporation. There isn't a whole lot left out there on the aerospace side to acquire. The commercial industrial side is where all the low lying fruit is. Their recent aquisition of Kidde, CHUB, and now Diebold shows this.
30 years ago the United Aircraft name was changed to United Tech. People at the time didn't think it made much sense and was a loss of identity. That's not the case anymore.
Craigslist. Honest, I laughed my ass off when I saw postings in my previous department there. Fairfield county is a bit of a drive unless you are looking at sikorsky. At least further than I'd commute for a job, though I do know a lot of people who do do it.
After this slip up http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks Diebold should be cheap.
My question is, if the economy gradually collapses throughout eight years of office, THEN can you blame the President? I mean, I can't really blame him for 9/11, but I can sure blame him for what's happened since. Maybe that's a bit of a stretched analogy...
Yes, they purchased their election business, (before the 2000 election, mind you.) -
In fact, they're not the only (nor are they nearly the worst) player in the "bad voting machines" business; they're just the most publicly known.
The worst part is: to be legitimately doing this business, they are supposed to follow rigorous testing, documentation, and change-control processes. They have demonstrated over and over that they are incapable of doing so - in violation of the contracts they signed with the government.
The people at fault here - are really the government election officials who brokered the deals with these companies, and allowed these machines to be used for several election cycles, in violation of the contracts under which they were purchased, and in many cases, in blatant violation of US and state law. Yet these machines continue to be used.
Diebold *DOES* use rigorous process controls in the design and production of its ATM machines - but refuses to push these practices down to their vote machine business.
And now a defense contractor is going to buy them?
Eisenhower warned us about the Military Industrial Complex: we're stuck in a $3 Billion war that we can't even get an honest discussion going for, in our supposedly "independent" press. And we're going to let the defense industry (which already owns NBC) - to own the voting machines too?
The ONLY thing that will save this screwed up nation is that we'll eventually run out of money and go bankrupt.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Correct. Diebold bought Global Election Systems in 2002, which in turn had eaten Spectrum Print and Mail in 2000. Between Spectrum and Global there were five serious convicted felons in management. It's unclear whether or not Diebold understood what a pack of pirates they were getting in bed with.
To this day the elections division often appears to be a rogue group within Diebold.
The reason Diebold bought the struggling Global was the $3.5billion in Federal funding pumped into buying new voting machines via the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). $3.5bil is a lot of chum in the water and attracted sharks, of which Global/Diebold was only one.
All of the UTI (potential buyer) remarks suggest that they want Diebold's old-line business - ATMs, bank security, etc. No word on election stuff.
Odds are they'll roll the banking business under the UTI brand, dumping the elections biz and the now-badly-damaged Diebold brand name with it.
It's about the best thing that could happen to the core company, and the worst thing that could happen to the rogue election division.
But there's a problem.
There's now too much dirt to be found by new owners, both in the rogue elections division and in the core company related to the SEC filings. While selling out to UTI would be the best move for the stockholders, it might lead to the current management ending up in jail.
Grab some popcorn and watch the show.
McCain's chief political advisor, Charlie Black, is currently a lobbyist for United Tech, that's why this would benefit Republicans.
The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8673726680080882009
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
No, because there are OTHER market forces in play. The president/congress/etc can attempt to slow market growth (huge peaks lead into huge dips, so try to smooth the curve out) or increase market growth (when the market's dying down, and needs a little push to keep its bottom from being too low before it cycles back up). The economy is basically a sine wave.
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