SANTA CLARA, CA, April 1, 2009 /BSNesswire/ — Scott McNealy announced that he has resigned as Chairman of the Board of Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) to link with an investor group to launch a counter-bid for the company.
McNealy commented: “The terms IBM is offering are far below the intrinsic value of the company. IBM is trying to swoop in during a bad economic time and buy Sun assets and revenues with no regard to developing real value for Sun shareholders.”
The exact composition of the investor syndicate has not been announced but it does include Carl Icahn. Icahn is said to be prepared to use the same approach he employed with BEA Systems, another technology infrastructure company he successfully put into play. Eventually BEA went into the maw of Oracle.
What’s surprising about the combination is that Icahn tends to take an adversarial role with entrenched managements who often think their company is worth more than buyers are willing to offer. Yahoo investors can only dream about the $33/share Microsoft offer that was turned down.
Icahn certainly brings the resources for IBM or any other buyer of Sun to take notice. The company has also flirted with going private which could be another path that Icahn and McNealy may be exploring.
Rumor has it that Icahn has been using options and derivatives to build a “synthetic long” in Sun Microsystems stock to try and obscure his exact strategy and ownership position.
Insiders said that Icahn moved quickly when Sun put itself in play by talking to IBM. He contacted McNealy and sold him on taking a more aggressive strategy rather than being a sitting duck for sharp IBM negotiators.
Scott McNealy has been part of Sun since the beginning as a co-founder in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla and Andy Bechtolsheim.
McNealy also commented that the vision and product strategy of Sun has been building towards just this moment for decades and he’s not surprised that IBM wants to snatch it just before their strategy is fully vindicated by the massive adoption of cloud computing where Sun is a leader.
CONTACT: Judy McIntyre, BSNesswire, 617-475-3034 (Remember to say April Fool!)
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We’ve had quite a few comments from people but due to strong language can’t post them here. We regret that our satire is a lightning rod for the pent up hostilities and resentments for some people but we hope you eventually figure out a way to stop beating yourselves up and take in life in a little more balanced fashion.
If you need help we can recommend http://www.arnoldpatent.com/
Best wishes and good luck from our staff.
Seems like Sun in play is a topic of interest to many, funny how hard it is to find balance and humor when the economy is sinking a company who never had layoffs is now on it’s third or fourth, totaling well over 12000 employees many who had been there from the start who now find the stock options they had have no value while the young CEO just took an 11 million bonus and the only ones making money are wall street investors. I suppose satire is a good way to release the tension so it is actually a breath of fresh air, but the real beauty os the going away messages the sun employees send each other of how much they enjoyed working together. This piece of satire could actually even be a wish for a white knight type of story where the once noble founders come back to save the village instead of running away with the plunder, only time will tell but actually a great April fools joke….. Which might also be what Sun has turned into……….. a joke
Sun was a great company for a long time. Many Sun employees left to start other great companies, BEA Systems comes to mind.
Unfortunately the leadership of the company didn’t really see what was coming. IBM was fortunate enough to have a Lou Gerstner come in and blow up the constant internal rationalizations to deny reality. Sun has had no such outsider.
It might have been hard to do worse than Scott McNealy but Jonathan Schwartz has actually been far worse. What Scott didn’t know or understand about software Jonathan doesn’t know about general management. (And that’s a great deal for you neophytes out there.)
The bigger picture is even worse. Corporate executives and Wall Street professionals have heartlessly profiteered at the expense of just about everyone else. The truth is it’s more the rule than the exception. The only way to really escape it is to do something yourself, start your own firm, do it with honor, integrity, honesty and virtue.
Bah! I hate when April Fool’s jokes sound serious. Curse their eyes!