SCO Goes Private With $100 Million Backing 411
AmIAnAi writes "Just when you thought it was all over, the SCO story takes a new twist. SCO has received $100 million financing from Stephen Norris Capital Partners to get them out of Chapter 11 and go private 'The move gives Stephen Norris, whose namesake founder was a co-founder of private equity giant The Carlyle Group, a controlling interest in SCO, which now has a platform to continue its court battle with Novell Inc. over royalties from the Unix server operating system, SCO's main business ... According to a statement from the company, SNCP already has a business plan for SCO that includes pursuing its legal claims.'"
So what else does SNCP own (Score:3, Interesting)
Connect the dots (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks to spacelifeform on GL:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/12/bloomberg/bxfour.php [iht.com]
NEW YORK: Four Seasons Hotels, the manager of 74 luxury hotels, said Monday that it had agreed to be taken private by Bill Gates, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the chief executive for $3.8 billion, including debt.
Coincedence?
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Who is Stephen Norris,
http://www.snpartners.com/norris.html [snpartners.com]
Looks like there could very easily be some behind the curtain financing of this through foreign nationals.
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Mr. Norris acted as a principal financial advisor to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal Al Saud of Kingdom Holding Company, in structuring and negotiating the re-capitalization of Citibank, which returned over $15 billion in profits on about $590 million of equity invested. He also advised or played a key role in other Kingdom Holding Company investments. He was appointed by former president George H.W. Bush and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve as one of five governing members of the $100 billion Federal Retirement System Thrift Investment Board.
Since 1997, Mr. Norris, and certain members of his team, have worked on a number of investments including real estate investments in Europe and the United States. They were involved in amongst others the privatization of Thompson CSF, the recapitalization of Suez, the acquisition of portions of Credit Foncier's real estate portfolio in Paris by the German firm of IVG, the formation of Nomura's (London) bid for a Dutch mortgage bank, the offer by a major Saudia Arabian investment firm for Lamborgini in Italy, and the formation of a bid by Leucadia International's for the Labouchere Bank in Holland. He also negotiated and structured investments in Synxis Corporation, which was backed by George Soros and Mr. Norris, and MARC Global Holdings.
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Well, there's one bunch that's going to be happy.. (Score:5, Interesting)
dons tinfoil hat... (Score:2, Interesting)
-sarcasm?
Re:Yikes (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Brilliant! (Score:5, Interesting)
If that hive of villainry fails, some of their dealings could see the daylight. And at least a couple of big companies are really interested in making sure this doesn't happen. So they funnel money into the sinking ship to keep it afloat or make it sink in a secluded place -- it's better to lose some cash than have the dirt revealed.
Re:damn Damn DAMN! (Score:3, Interesting)
its a worldwide trend (Score:2, Interesting)
There is an ongoing mad scramble to snag IP assets of all kinds.
(Key word: ALL KINDS)
I have been a long time IT person, and I happen to also be able to this peek into this neo-IP world, so I have a sense of deja vu -- similar to the dot-com frenzied land-grab --except that there are NO joe six packs doing the investing, just ultra-rich+ultra-smart professionals.
If anything is copyrighted (not patented) it has value for an infinite time frame. Grab onto it.
This may be yettunnadder instance of where
Re:Look for more Microsoft money behind (Score:5, Interesting)
Where top Bush administration types meet the members of the family of Usama bin Laden.
Re:Yikes (Score:5, Interesting)
They started talking about how IBM and Novel stole a whole bunch of their Intellectual Property and put it into Linux, and how Linux is nothing but a bunch a thieves.
I just sat there biting my tongue and changed the subject quickly, but it was really odd talking to someone "on the other side of the fence" who was a developer, and not in management.
Re:Look for more Microsoft money behind (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially considering Lou Gerstner, former CEO of IBM, is on the board of the Carlyle Group. That's a bit of a WTF moment right there...
Some more actions from Microsoft (Score:1, Interesting)
But wait, it gets better. Microsoft, along with some partners, recently invested $100 in Plaform Solutions, Inc. For those of you who follow this kind of business tactics, PSI is IBM's only competitor in the very lucrative (yes, still) Mainframe market. IBM sued PSI about a year ago on the basis of some bogus software patents. PSI threw in the towel by getting rid of nearly all their employees, and used the remaining VC money to fight this lawsuit, and countersue IBM. They have an excellent case there, by all accounts.
But they were dead as a company until Microsoft and their partners came along.
So, in short, Microsoft is dumping a LOT of money to fight IBM. On multiple fronts.
The main question here is what else they have up their sleeves now, with this investment in SCO?
how is this a bad thing? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Look for more Microsoft money behind (Score:1, Interesting)
Amazing that in one line people create a [false] connection with UBL and two US Presidents, but these same lefty conspiracy theorists never mention the reported 100Million deal between the Clintons and the Dubai Royalty.
Not any less amazing than you connecting "lefties" and the triangulating, centrist, sell-out Clintons in a single sentence. Maybe if the Right didn't have a complete strangle hold on the media you could actually find out what the Left thinks instead of having to make shit up. If the above is any indication you wouldn't know a Lefty if he came up and bit you on the ass.
Re:Capital expects returns. (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't understand how this cash injection serves Microsoft's interests. SCO is on track to lose all of its court cases. This will only serve to confirm that Linux has a clean code base.
What Microsoft should do is sell SCO a dozen of its 236 bullshit patents it claims Linux violates and have SCO launch the patent lawsuits. Then Microsoft can pretend to be innocent and avoid a patent Armageddon scenario with IBM and other players.
Re:Capital expects returns. (Score:4, Interesting)
A 'pure' free market does not refer to a lack of regulation, but a market in which the government enjoys no special privilege over private enterprise. The logical conclusion of such a system would result in privatized police forces, fire companies, etc. competing on equal terms with the analogous government entities. Both government and private enterprise would still be subject to regulation.
Consequently, capitalist arguments against anti-trust laws are not inherent to capitalism in general, but are made from the position that that class of regulation does not result in a more productive economy. In contrast, regulations that capitalists generally consider to be necessary for a healthy free market economy would be contract law and property law.
Re:Capital expects returns. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Capital expects returns. (Score:3, Interesting)
When you go read actual free market theorists, such as Friedrich Hayek and other libertarians [google.com.br], you can clearly and undoubtedly see they starting with the exact opposite assumption. For them, knowledge of the present is always partial, incomplete, uncertain and most of the time subjective, and even more so when we talk about the future, and that's why free market is better. Were it not the case and a planned economy would be feasible. But since it isn't actually the case, then millions and millions of partially-knowledgeable people reacting almost instantly to fast changes happening around them ends up necessarily producing a better outcome than a bunch of partially-knowledgeable central planners whose decisions, all of which are almost by definition knowledgeless, are not only slow in reacting to changes, but all have the potential of badly affecting huge amounts of people in the same, simultaneous, exact way.
Hayek even went so far as to analyze whether technological advances in data gathering and information processing could in theory reach a point where a managed or planned economy would be able to surpass the effectiveness of fast-reacting, imperfect-knowledge-based free market. His conclusion? That if a planned economy had access to infinite processing power, infinite memory etc. it would still reach, at best, the same effectiveness of the free market. But surpass it? Nope, sorry.
It's unfortunate that, since anti-free-market theorist keep misrepresenting what libertarians think and say, they don't take the time to study and understand these fine analytical points. If they did, actually productive talk could be established. Alas, they don't, and it doesn't.