The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20100523155754/http://hp.sys-con.com:80/node/1404412

Welcome!

HP Authors: Maureen O'Gara, Tom Lounibos, Dana Gardner, Hovhannes Avoyan, Pat Romanski

Related Topics: HP, SOA & WOA

HP: Article

So Who’s Company C?

Seems Company C – which might be Dell or Lenovo – dangled $6–$7 a share in front of Palm
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
May 22, 2010 05:00 AM EDT
Reads:
 397

HP came close to losing Palm to a company only identified as Company C in a chatty proxy that Palm filed with the SEC last Friday.

Seems Company C - which might be Dell or Lenovo - dangled $6-$7 a share in front of Palm while HP was stalled at $4.75 but then cut its bid to an immovable $5.50, giving Palm the opportunity to call HP up holding a stop watch in its hand to tell it to put up or shut up. HP then anted up the winning $5.70 cash or $1.2 billion.

Company C offered an alternative one-time fee of $800 million for certain patents and a non-exclusive license to webOS - which is where it started - but Palm, which as we suspected was only months away from running out of money, reckoned the IP transaction would do nothing to solve its long-term issues of scale and resources while compromising its IP portfolio, which its board considered a core strategic asset. And so Palm went to HP.

The proxy reveals that Palm's advisors approached 16 companies about buying Palm. Six of them signed NDAs and did due diligence. One of them, called Company A in the proxy, bid $600 million. Another called Company B offered a stock deal. A fourth, which never signed the NDA or made a bid, wanted to do an IP deal.

When asked about HP's intentions for webOS during the company's earnings call Tuesday CEO Mark Hurd said it would be used in a number of form factors including slates and web-connected printers. "We've got a whole series of web-connected printers now and as they connect to the web, they need an OS."

See http://investor.palm.com/sec.cfm.

Published May 22, 2010 – Reads 397
Copyright © 2010 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025. Twitter: @MaureenOGara

Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.