The headline says it all (see Infosys goes back for its future). On Friday the Dell board filed its intent to recommend the offer from Michael Dell and Silver Lake to take the company private at $13.65 per share cash. The motion will put to the vote on 18th July. The bid was originally announced in February (see here) with various other runners and riders subsequently joining the race (see Two more bids for Dell) including Carl Icahn, one of Dell's largest shareholders.
Dell (the company) is not in a 'good place' and hasn't been for some time (see Dell, Cisco – a tale of two hardware vendors and work back). For me the issue isn't whether 'the price is right' (by the way, I don't care – I'm not a shareholder). It's whether Dell (the founder) will be able to transform the company's fortunes any better outside of the public eye than under its unrelenting gaze. His track record on the 'big calls' has not been glorious. On the one hand he rather let the 'mobile revolution' almost pass the company by. On the other hand he spent nearly $4b cash to buy legacy IT outsourcing firm Perot Systems (see Dell, Perot try the Texas Tango).
I would have thought that if anyone was going to pay some $24bn cash to take Dell private, the first thing they would do is find new top management with some new ideas to try to set the company back on course. But there again, what do I know?
