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Dell Confirms and Details Rival Bids From Blackstone and Icahn
DavidGilbert99 writes "Dell has confirmed it has received 'two alternative acquisition proposals' from billionaire investor Carl Icahn and the world's largest equity firm Blackstone. These bids rival the $24.4 billion offer made by co-founder Michael Dell and equity firm Silver Lake last month, who want to take the company private. Dell also confirmed details of the two offers, with both exceeding Michael Dell's original offer of $13.65 per share, with Blackstone offering $14.25 and Icahn offering $15 per share."
Replying to myself as I can't edit posts: there's a much better write-up at Ars: http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/dells-game-of-thrones-icahn-blackstone-make-rival-bids-for-company/ The key part that's missing in the IB Times: how Icahn plans to finance the takeover. Here it is: "Icahn's group would put up a total of $5 billion in cash and equity in Dell as part of the deal, spend $7.4 billion of Dell's cash-on-hand, collect $1.7 billion by financing against Dell's outstanding accounts receivable, and add $5.2 billion in new debt to the company's ledgers."
In other words, Icahn gets a loan for $5B, spends over $7B of Dell's own cash and takes out two separate loans against Dell's assets for another $8B. In further other words, the only people who would benefit from the deal are current stockholders who think that making an extra 50 cent a share now is a good thing. Everyone else, including employees, will be handed a Dell that will be significantly worse off.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's not so much legal as it is a built-in calculation in the offer-sheet. Yes, someone will officially have to tender the full asking price for the company, but the billions that Dell has in cash aren't counted as risk in the loan. Instead, the new owner will immediately use the cash to pay off part of the loan, which of course would have been structured to have the company as collateral. Even if the company isn't collateral, you can't prevent the owner of a company to do whatever they want with the cash in accounting. Yes, it's soulless, but that just goes to show what kind of people engage in LBOs.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Their portable istuff uses ARM SoCs designed by Apple (they've bought up P.A. Semi, Intrinsity, and a couple other fabless semi companies in the past few years). ARM (the company) was a joint venture between Acorn and Apple back in the Newton days.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.