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Icahn Abandons Bid To Prevent Dell From Going Private
Via El Reg comes news that Carl Icahn has, after a brief battle with Michael Dell for control over the company, thrown in the towel. From the article: "Icahn said in an open letter to shareholders that he still thought that Big Mike's $13.88 per share offer for the firm undervalued it, but had decided that it would be
'almost impossible' to win the battle at the shareholder vote on Thursday. 'I realize that some stockholders will be disappointed that we do not fight on,' he wrote. 'However, over the last decade, mainly through "activism," we have enhanced stockholder value in many companies by billions of dollars. We did not accomplish this by waging battles that we thought we would lose.'"
This news has been around for a few days now, why is it getting featured now?
i have liked this story brother .
i have share it in my facebook account
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Nuf said !!
This shows how those without backbones should not start fights !!
Nuf said !!
He needs to change his name to IChahn't !! Or French !! Same difference !!
Nuf said !!
It is Dell and Dell is crap !! Why would Americans care one way or the other !! More Snowden !!
Nuf said !!
It wasn't like his heart was bleeding for Dell. Couldn't have expected him, of all people, to turn the company around.
a main reason why unca carl gave up is that the dell board of directors played like washington politics in __changing the rules of the vote__ so that it (the upcoming vote to approve a buyout bid) favors dell's takeover bid over his... another is that carl's choice of ceo (name unknown, never released publicly?) backed out at last minute.
The sooner the better.
My Uncle Charlie got GMC Yukon SUV only from working part-time off a home computer... .........>www.jobs60.com
...line?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Will security firms detect police spyware?
By Declan McCullagh, News.com
Published on ZDNet News: Jul 17, 2007 11:00:00 AM
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original story url: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6197020.html
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"A recent federal court decision raises the question of whether antivirus companies may intentionally overlook spyware that is secretly placed on computers by police.
In the case decided earlier this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, federal agents used spyware with a keystroke logger--call it fedware--to record the typing of a suspected Ecstasy manufacturer who used encryption to thwart the police.
A CNET News.com survey of 13 leading antispyware vendors found that not one company acknowledged cooperating unofficially with government agencies. Some, however, indicated that they would not alert customers to the presence of fedware if they were ordered by a court to remain quiet.
Spyware survey
Most of the companies surveyed, which covered the range from tiny firms to Symantec and IBM, said they never had received such a court order. The full list of companies surveyed: AVG/Grisoft, Computer Associates, Check Point, eEye, IBM, Kaspersky Lab, McAfee, Microsoft, Sana Security, Sophos, Symantec, Trend Micro and Websense. Only McAfee and Microsoft flatly declined to answer that question. (Click here for the verbatim responses to the survey.)
Because only two known criminal prosecutions in the United States involve police use of key loggers, important legal rules remain unsettled. But key logger makers say that police and investigative agencies are frequent customers, in part because recording keystrokes can bypass the increasingly common use of encryption to scramble communications and hard drives. Microsoft's Windows Vista and Apple's OS X include built-in encryption.
Some companies that responded to the survey were vehemently pro-privacy. "Our customers are paying us for a service, to protect them from all forms of malicious code," said Marc Maiffret, eEye Digital Security's co-founder and chief technology officer. "It is not up to us to do law enforcement's job for them so we do not, and will not, make any exceptions for law enforcement malware or other tools." eEye sells Blink Personal for $25, which includes antivirus and antispyware features.
Others were more conciliatory. Check Point, which makes the popular ZoneAlarm utility, said it would offer federal police the "same courtesy" that it extends to legitimate third-party vendors that request to be whitelisted. A Check Point representative said, though, that the company had "never been" in that situation.
This isn't exactly a new question. After the last high-profile case in which federal agents turned to a key logger, some security companies allegedly volunteered to ignore fedware. The Associated Press reported in 2001 that "McAfee Corp. contacted the FBI... to ensure its software wouldn't inadvertently detect the bureau's snooping software." McAfee subsequently said the report was inaccurate.
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Later that year, the FBI confirmed that it was creating spy software called "Magic Lantern" that would allow agents to inject keystroke loggers remotely through a virus without having physical access to the computer. (In both the recent Ecstasy case and the earlier key logging case involvin
Translation: I've pumped the value of Dell stock as high as I'm going to get it to go so I now have my eyes set on pumping the value of a different company's stock through my "activism".
I do appreciate that he air-quoted "activism"...
When a company goes public, it allows professional gamblers buy parts of the company in order to raise money. At this point, these gamblers demand that the company post regular results and news no matter how silly to give them some reason why other gamblers should buy these shares... or vouchers for a higher value. The value of this voucher on the gambling market almost never reflect the actual performance of the company. And the gambler market value has little actual impact on the actual value of the company. It's similar in nature to how betting on a horse doesn't make it run faster. Gambling on a football game doesn't actually alter the results of the game.
When a company like Dell volunteers to remove itself from the gambling pool because the people who run it feel they'd prefer the value of the company is actually based on the actual results of its performance, it is highly responsible. Like paying off a loan to the bank because you don't need the loan anymore.
While every experience I've ever had with Dell has been that they're a company full of hackers who lack the ability to do anything other than repackage technology they don't actually understand, I applaud them for setting a great example of financial responsibility even against the will of gamblers who pressure them to behave irresponsibly for their own personal gains.
I would like to see many other companies take the same path. Other tech companies, food companies, manufacturing companies, etc. The first step to fixing the U.S. economy is to gamble less and behave responsibly.
Let's hope this becomes a trend. Good job Dell!
Any amount of money that is above $0 is overvaluing Dell so he actually dodged quite the bullet there.
the guy is a greenmailer, pure and simple. other men, better men, say instead, "nice place ya got here, shame if anyting would happen to it, cabish?" while flicking ashes on all the papers on the desk.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If Icahn believes Dell is worth more than thirteen bucks a share, then he's not paying attention. Dell has already pissed away everything that made them successful in the first place. They got where they are by pioneering a highly-efficient build-to-order process, and for quite a while they had the best tech support in the DOS/Windows world. Those advantages are long gone.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm waiting for someone to sue a company for their stock going up after they shorted it.