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Dell Is Now a Private Company Again

Posted by timothy on from the back-to-the-dorms dept.

Gunfighter writes "StreetInsider.com reports that Dell, Inc. completed its go-private transaction by Michael Dell, Dell's Founder, Chairman and CEO, and Silver Lake Partners, a leading global technology investment firm. Stockholders will receive $13.75 in cash for each share of Dell common stock they hold, plus payment of a special cash dividend of $0.13 per share to stockholders of record as of the close of business on Oct. 28, 2013, for total consideration of $13.88 per share in cash. The total transaction is valued at approximately $24.9 billion."

13 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Only one more step left... by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Funny

    Shut it down

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Only one more step left... by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except for all the success they had with iMac, Powerbook G4, iBook before iPod

    2. Re:Only one more step left... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Strictly speaking, it's probably most accurate to say that Dell was right about Apple 1997 except that they'd just recently made; but not yet seen the payoff from, the choice to get Jobs and NEXT.

      Their "Hey, let's sell a confusing selection of increasingly antique PPCs in beige cases for increasingly risible prices, on the strength of our mostly-obsolete OS" strategy wasn't going anywhere, and would only have gotten worse as time went on (The price/performance of Wintels was improving, the sheer nastiness was decreasing (remember the good old days before bootable ATAPI CD drives and other basics? That's the kind of shit that made Apple's tendencies toward SCSI seem classy rather than merely expensive), and Apple's in-house attempt to modernize Classic MacOS was a miserable failure).

    3. Re:Only one more step left... by icebike · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Except those were NOT that successful, and those were precisely the computers Dell was talking about and which were sinking Apple at the time.

      Jobs vision was that he had to stop relying on desktop computers because he was clearly losing that war in spite of a few partially successful products. His vision saved the company by moving to gadgets, and letting the computer side play catch up. Jobs pretty much followed Dell's advice, pulling almost all the R&D money away from computers. He shit-canned his own operating system, went out and grabbed FreeBSD, Konqueror, and Cups, and packaged it to keep the faithful happy while the real effort went into the iPhone.

      Only his pride prevented him from killing off the computer line altogether.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    4. Re:Only one more step left... by zieroh · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your grasp of history is weak, or perhaps just willfully ignorant. Michael Dell uttered those words in late 1997. The iMac was announced in 1998.

      --
      People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
  2. Michael Dell hoisted with his own petard by JoeyRox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    October 6, 1997, Michael Dell was asked what he would do to fix Apple. His answer, "What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders". Well Dell has returned money to his shareholders. The Smartphone and Tablet industry will take care of the shutting-down-Dell part in due time.

    1. Re:Michael Dell hoisted with his own petard by alexander_686 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It’s high end services, not high end computers, that M. Dell really wants to do is sell.

      Take a look at what companies Dell has been buying recently. They have been high end high touch hardware (IIRC in the storage market) and consulting services. He wants to go down the same road that IBM and HP have travled.

    2. Re:Michael Dell hoisted with his own petard by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Dell has gigantic portion of the business market. desktop workstations, laptops, and servers.

      So did Sun at one point.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
  3. Not bad by postmortem · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Dell has one less thing to worry about: quarterly profits and revenue. This is right thing for struggling or declining companies. "analysts" won't bug them every moth how their market is shrinking and sales declining. Bet employees will feel safer too without threats of layoffs every time they don't meet "expectations"

    1. Re:Not bad by alexander_686 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Nope, those are corporate debt. It’s standard practice in a Leverage Buy Out. A close analogy is when you refi your house and pull cash out. The value of the house remains the same, your personal value remains the same (both assets and liabilities increase by the same amount) , it just your debt to equity ratio increases.

  4. Sweet! So when is the IPO? by Marrow · · Score: 4, Funny

    I mean, given the climate is there really a doubt there will be one?

  5. Your tax dollars at work by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Going "private", right. The money supposedly comes from Silver Lake Venture Partners. But they don't have $24 billion. Most of it is borrowed. From banks. Which borrow it from the Fed at very low rates. Which creates Government debt to pay for it.

    "Private equity" today is really equity to debt conversion. With interest rates so low, that's very attractive to management.

    This is "quantitative easing" at work.

  6. There's one thing that has to be said... by Megane · · Score: 5, Funny

    DUDE! You bought Dell!

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }