Deals

[Peter Fan]

Dave McClure je osnivac seed fonda i startup akseleratora 500startups:

 

Sve je to fino, but with all due respect, ali nek cijenjeni VC guru navede koji su to new comers u zadnjih 15-20 godina pobili dinosauruse u:

 

- automotive

- consumer goods

- telecom

- aerospace

- health care

- financial

- retail

- entertainment

 

segmetnima.

 

Molicu da se Netflix, Amazon i Tesla ne navode kao uspjesni primjeri, jer su u najboljem slucaju muvaju to negdje oko "pozitivne nule", a Tesla bez drzavnih subvencija vjerovatno nebi ni postojala.

Time uopste ne umanjujem validnost generalne teze o kreativnoj destrukciji, vec mi se cini da tip overhajpuje/ racionalizira ovaj trenutni bubble.

 

* izvinjavam se na mjesavini srpskog i engleskog

 

Inace, to je vec vidjeno i znamo kako se zavrsilo. Mali podsjetnik na to kako je "irrational exuberance" v. 1.0 izgledala:

 

 

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

James J. Cramer is the keynote speaker at the 6th Annual Internet and Electronic Commerce Conference and Exposition, held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City. From TheStreet.com

February 29, 2000

The Winners of the New World

 

You want winners? You want me to put my Cramer Berkowitz hedge fund hat on and just discuss what my fund is buying today to try to make money tomorrow and the next day and the next? You want my top 10 stocks for who is going to make it in the New World? You know what? I am going to give them to you. Right here. Right now.

OK. Here goes. Write them down -- no handouts here!: 724 Solutions, Ariba, Digital Island, Exodus, InfoSpace.com, Inktomi, Mercury Interactive, Sonera, VeriSign and Veritas Software.

 We are buying some of every one of these this morning as I give this speech. We buy them every day, particularly if they are down, which, no surprise given what they do, is very rare. And we will keep doing so until this period is over -- and it is very far from ending. Heck, people are just learning these stories on Wall Street, and the more they come to learn, the more they love and own! Most of these companies don't even have earnings per share, so we won't have to be constrained by that methodology for quarters to come.

 

There, now that that's done with, can we talk about the methodology that produced those top 10 so that you can understand how, in a universe of a gazillion stocks, we arrived at those, so you too can figure it out? I hope we can because I have another 10 and still another 10 and another. They all do the same thing: They make the Web faster, cheaper, better and easier to access anywhere, anytime. They allow you to get on the Web securely anywhere in the world. They make the Web economy the only economy that matters. That's all they do.

 

We try to own every one of them. Every single one. And if I had my druthers, I wouldn't own any other stocks in the year 2000. Because these are the only ones worth owning right now in this extremely difficult, extremely narrow stock market. They are the only ones that are going higher consistently in good days and bad. I love every one of them, just as I loathe the rest of the stock universe.

How did this stock market get like this, to where the only people who can make a dime in it are the people who are interested in the most arcane subject, the moving of data from one space to another, via strange new machines and software? How did it get to the point where nothing else matters, most particularly the 90% of the stock market I have studied for the last 20 years? How did all of that knowledge become totally irrelevant and the only stocks that work are the stocks of companies that didn't exist five years ago and came public in the last two or three years?

 

Let's start with the world in the early 21st century, a world where capital is abundant for a chosen few and nonexistent for just about everybody else. It is a world where the whole of Wall Street and Silicon Valley is at your fingertips if you are creating the infrastructure for the New Economy, and a world where neither Wall Street nor Silicon Valley could give a darn about you if you are using that infrastructure.

Or in other words, we don't care if General Motors (GM_) and Ford (F_) are going with Oracle (ORCL_) or with i2 (ITWO_) for their new parts procurement process. We don't want to own GM or Ford on any occasion. In fact, we would rather own the loser in that tech bake-off than the winner in nontech, because in this new world, there is so much business to be done for the i2s and the Oracles that the capital will remain plentiful for them, win or lose a particular piece of business.

Just yesterday I found myself wishing I had bought i2 when it lost out to Oracle for the giant business-to-business contract for the Big Three automakers. Others had the same idea because i2, the loser Friday, was up much more Monday than GM and Ford could be this year. i2 can own the world because the company with the access to cheap capital always wins. And the companies with no access have to lose.

 

Or, closer to home. We in the stock market don't care that The Street.com Inc., a company I helped create, has built a compelling new brand, has more than 100,000 paid subscribers and has $100 million in the bank. We just want to know which companies TheStreet.com employs to publish each day. We want to know who the host is, which publishing tool works best, which wireless strategy TheStreet.com is adopting and how does it automate its email? (By the way, the answers are Exodus, Vignette, Motorola and Kana  -- all at or near their 52-week highs as TheStreet.com languishes at its 52-week low, a triumph of the arms merchants over the combatants if there ever were one.)

How did this bizarro world where nine-tenths of the companies I have followed as a stock picker for the last 20 years are losers and one-tenth are winners? To answer that question, you have to throw out all of the matrices and formulas and texts that existed before the Web. You have to throw them away because they can't make money for you anymore, and that is all that matters. We don't use price-to-earnings multiples anymore at Cramer Berkowitz. If we talk about price-to-book, we have already gone astray. If we use any of what Graham and Dodd teach us, we wouldn't have a dime under management.

 

So how do we sort through which stocks get bought and which stocks get assigned to the waste bin?

We have a phrase on Wall Street. It's called raising the bar. If you can raise the bar, or brighten the outlook for your company, if you can see your growth accelerating, your stock will go higher and you will be given the currency to expand, acquire and do whatever you want. That's the secret of the quintessential New Economy stock: Cisco (CSCO_). This giant networker has the ability to control its own destiny. It can, as my colleague Adam Lashinsky says at TSC, buy any company it wants to. It can pay any price. Because it has a currency that it better than U.S. dollars: It has Cisco stock. It can do that because it raises the bar every quarter!

But what about the Old Economy stocks? Can Merck raise the bar? Can Pfizer? Can U.S. Steel? Or Phelps Dodge? Union Pacific? No, no, no, no, no and no. So what happens to them? Despite the billions in buybacks and the plethora of strong buys that the Street has put out about these companies, their stocks have no traction. They just stumble along, rising and falling haphazardly with every whim and quizzical speech of the Federal Reserve chairman that still controls their destiny. If Greenspan indicates that there is more tightening ahead, these traditional companies, the ones that you measure with traditional matrices, get pole-axed as we worry about where the capital will ultimately come from if credit gets choked off, while the arms merchants in the Web war, with capital to burn, just go higher.

 

It is no secret that the Dow, made up principally of companies that can't raise the bar, is down 12% while the Nasdaq, which is made up of companies that can raise the bar, is up 12%. And in the self-fulfilling jungle that is Wall Street, only growth can maintain growth!

 

So how do we find what are the great growth companies, knowing that growth and not cheapness of stock to company is what matters? We have to look for the fastest-growing industries and then select the companies that can make the infrastructure happen the fastest and the cheapest in those industries. The growth must be positively organic, if not viral. There must be heavy technological barriers to entry. And there must be an ability to scale without any thought to human cost. These companies must be able to dominate their businesses or be willing to become part of a larger institution that dominates.

So, whom does that eliminate? First, any company that is a commodity producer simply can't be owned, no matter what. The New Economy makes those be simply a function of low-cost producer with no ability ever to raise price. This, of course, is the crying shame of the way the Fed is trying to break the economy because the only place that could stand for a little inflation is in the deflationary commodity industries. But their inflation revolves around the ability to build inventory to anticipate future price hikes and the Fed is taking short rates to a height that makes it uneconomic to stockpile.

Second, it eliminates any bricks-and-mortar company that doesn't embrace the Net. To not embrace the Net is to give a cost edge to a competitor who does. It does so because the Net removes the middleman that was a product of the regional economy. There is $4 trillion worth of wholesaling that gets instantly eliminated by the Net. Before only the largest orders could be processed by the biggest companies because it was too expensive otherwise. Now all orders can be processed by the biggest companies through the Web. There is no need for the jobber or the wholesaler. Obviously, if you are still using that old distribution network, you can't compete against those who do.

Third, it eliminates any industry that does not have a proprietary brand. This is one of those weird features of the Web that people haven't woken up to yet, but it will seem obvious a few months from now. In the New World's economy, the desire to "name your own price" is too great to squelch. An outfit like priceline will change the very nature of brands in this country. It won't destroy the premium brand, but it will force everyone else out of the market. Why? Because the way priceline works is that we are trying to buy the premium brand for the price of the off-price brand. That means the off-price brands, whether they be Colgate or Dial or Hunt's or Ralston, are simply doomed by the Web. Why would you ever buy the second- or third-best when you can get the best via priceline for the same price as the lower tier? Ahh, that's a real killer. It leaves only the top brands to vie for supermarket space. The others won't be worth carrying. They won't move! Oh yeah, same goes for the airlines and the hotels and just about everybody else.

 

Fourth, it just destroys retail as we know it. Why? Because the companies that embrace the Web more vigorously will eventually be pitted against other companies that embrace the Web more vigorously, creating a virtual constant price war, the kind of war that Marx, of all, actually predicted would happen to capitalism. It will happen to retail once everyone realizes that Amazon recreated Wal-Mart online because it will forever have access to cheap capital. Why do I say forever? Because at a certain point, it will be done with its buildout and will effectively be able to cherry-pick whomever it wants to destroy while having it be subsidized by other areas. It will be Home Depot vs. Wal-Mart vs. Amazon in the end. Nobody else. And that's only if Home Depot figures out it better get on the Web and fast.

 

Fifth, it wipes out everybody who straddles the Old and New Worlds. Let's take the brokerage industry. If you are trying to preserve a price point, because you need those margins, you can't and you become roadkill. Same with journalism. If you are free online and cost offline, you will eventually not be able to charge offline. Why not? Because the Hewlett-Packards and Intels and Ciscos are bent on making the online version far superior to the offline version. And they will do it. They, too, have the access to capital to make it happen.

 

I can tell you from TheStreet.com that we have substantial cost advantages over our printed cousins. We can come out around the clock. We don't require paper, ink, delivery people or trucks. In that sense, we are much more like television, personal television, which is why we were wrong initially to think we could charge for basic news, and right to think we can charge a huge amount for proprietary analysis that can make you money.

The struggle between the offliners and the onliners in banking will also pan out just like these other industries, with huge wins for those with a fresh online culture and hideous losses for those who don't see it coming or are slow to adjust. If you have to preserve your giant branch network and the costs that come with it while someone else perfects secure wireless Internet transactions, you can forget about it. You can't afford to compete. How can Bank of America compete with Nokia as a way to bank? How can Goldman Sachs compete with Yahoo! as a way to invest? Isn't Nokia, with its wireless machine that goes everywhere a better bank than one that needs branches? Isn't Yahoo!, with its access to all of the information and quotes in the financial world a better place to buy stocks than Goldman?

 

Of course they are.

So, if you can't own the retailers, and you can't own transports, and you can't own banks and brokers and financials and you can't own commodity makers and you can't own the newspapers, and you can't own the machinery stocks, what can you own?

 

A-ha, that just leaves us with tech. That's why we keep coming back to it. That's why, despite the 80% increase in the Nasdaq last year, we are looking at another record year now. It is by that process of elimination that I have picked my top 10. And my next 10 and my next 10 after. Only those companies are worth owning. The rest?

 

You can have them.

Thank you.

Edited April 17, 2015 by Peter Fan

[Eraserhead]

Zanimljiv tekst o sve cescoj praksi da kompanije otkupljuju sopstvene akcije:

 

Sound and Fury of Buyback Scrutiny Will Change Little, Goldman Sachs Says

 

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Not sure whether stock buybacks are good or bad? You'll get a lot of help making up your mind during the next election cycle, but don't expect much to happen in the way of real change, a Goldman Sachs report advises.

 

Share repurchases have increased throughout the recovery from the global financial crisis, "totaling over $500 billion in 2014 among S&P 500 companies and representing more than one-third of cash use and about half of earnings," Alec Phillips, U.S. political economist with the New York bank, wrote in a report. "Our equity strategists expect buybacks to rise to around $600 billion in 2015."

 

Indeed, with 2015 less than half over, $370 billion in buybacks have already been announced at S&P 500 accompanies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.  Those include Apple  (AAPL) and General Electric (GE), which announced $50 billion repurchase programs, and Macy's (M), which launched a $1.5 billion initiative.

 

Phillips cites three reasons why share buybacks are likely to get more attention in and around DC:

 

The growth of buybacks has "raised concerns not just among progressive lawmakers but also among some investors and analysts who suggest that the funds might be better put to other uses."

"The White House is expected to nominate two SEC commissioners, one Republican and one Democrat, to replace two departing members. It seems likely that the nominees will be pressed on this issue."

As 2016 election hype grows, candidates will be asked to weigh in on a number of financial regulatory issues, including this one.

Despite the noise, Philips doesn't see much coming from increased talk about buybacks in the next two years. Anti-buyback legislation would have a difficult time making it through a Republican-controlled -- i.e., corporation friendly -- Congress.

 

"Corporate share repurchases look likely to draw increased political attention, but rules changes are unlikely in the near term, he wrote. "To the extent that any policy changes are made, the effect on business investment is unclear but seems likely to be small."

 

While the SEC might amend rules issued in 1982 that limit the legal liability a company could face for stock repurchases -- which influence stock prices -- Phillips points to recent statements by SEC Commissioner Kara M. Stein that suggest the agency won't do so.

 

"It would be troubling if companies were mortgaging their futures -- and the futures of their employees and other stakeholders -- just to meet short-term quarterly earnings-per-share targets," Stein said in an April statement, but "a meaningful body of research disputes the notion that short-term investment horizons are in conflict with longer-term performance at all."

 

What's behind all the criticism of buybacks?

 

If you follow the thesis that a public company's objective is to deliver shareholder value, a share repurchase is one quick way to boost stock prices. Basic supply and demand principles would dictate that fewer shares on the market would drive up stock prices. Some of the debate focuses on whether pushing up share prices that way increases value in the long term.

 

 

Blackrock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink, whose New York-based investment firm manages $4.77 trillion in assets, argues that it frequently doesn't.

 

"With interest rates approaching zero, returning excessive amounts of capital to investors -- who will enjoy comparatively meager benefits from it in this environment -- sends a discouraging message about a company's ability to use its resources wisely and develop a coherent plan to create value over the long term," he wrote in a letter to several CEOs.

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with buybacks as long as they're conducted in a "measured fashion, he said, but other strategies, such as increasing spending on research and development may lead to new products that deliver longer-lasting stock gains.

 

"Corporate leaders' duty of care and loyalty is not to every investor or trader who owns their companies' shares at any moment in time, but to the company and its long-term owners," Fink wrote. He urged leaders to resist pressure from short-term shareholders for immediate returns.

 

Of the 120-plus companies that have announced buybacks so far this year, several cited a desire to simply reward investors or boost confidence in stock that executives argued was undervalued.

 

"This year's planned repurchase program is the best way to continue to drive value for our shareholders," Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan said in a March statement on the planned repurchase of $4 billion in common stock.

 

At designer apparel-maker Michael Kors (KORS), shares have dropped 35% this year as sales weakened in both the U.S. and abroad. In May, the company responded by announcing a $500 million buyback program.

 

''As the market continues to undervalue our company, myself and the management team and the board feels that's just the wrong perspective on the very, very successful and strong company that we've built globally," CEO John Idol said in May.

 

While buybacks tend to push up stock prices -- and boost earnings per share, since profit is divided over a small number of shares -- the practice may mask problems with the company's fundamentals, some critics argue. Others take a more populist tone, arguing that since many executive salaries are paid largely in stock, a share repurchase can be a clever way to boost executive compensation.

 

More significantly, buybacks can also weaken competitive strength: Cash used in share repurchases can't be spent on product development or modernizing equipment, for example. Some politicians even go so far as to link share repurchases to stagnant wages in the U.S. since 1979.

 

"In the past, this money went to productive investments in the form of higher wages, research and development, training, or new equipment," U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., argued in an April letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White. "Today, cash is being extracted from companies and placed on the sidelines."

[Ravanelli]

prča o liku koji je prešao igricu glede dilovanja

redak lik

 

Kirk Kerkorian, Billionaire Investor, Dies at 98

Kirk Kerkorian, the eighth-grade dropout who bootstrapped his way to billionaire by buying and selling stakes in airlines, auto companies, Nevada casinos and Hollywood studios, has died. He was 98.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-16/kirk-kerkorian-billionaire-from-hotels-cars-films-dies-at-98

[Eraserhead]

 

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/f5610ce4-1f7a-11e5-aa5a-398b2169cf79.html#axzz3ewWSavDX

Edited July 4, 2015 by Eraserhead

[Peter Fan]

A evo malo i o M&A gone wrong:

 

 

Microsoft to Cut Jobs, Take $7.6 Billion Writedown on Nokia

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-08/microsoft-to-cut-7-800-jobs-as-it-restructures-phone-business

[Eraserhead]

Za sve one koji su zainteresovani Harris Williams, jedna od vodecih mid-market investicionih banki, objavljuje vrlo zanimljive industry reports.

[Budja]

Zanimljiv tekst o sve cescoj praksi da kompanije otkupljuju sopstvene akcije:

 

Sound and Fury of Buyback Scrutiny Will Change Little, Goldman Sachs Says

 

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Not sure whether stock buybacks are good or bad? You'll get a lot of help making up your mind during the next election cycle, but don't expect much to happen in the way of real change, a Goldman Sachs report advises.

 

Share repurchases have increased throughout the recovery from the global financial crisis, "totaling over $500 billion in 2014 among S&P 500 companies and representing more than one-third of cash use and about half of earnings," Alec Phillips, U.S. political economist with the New York bank, wrote in a report. "Our equity strategists expect buybacks to rise to around $600 billion in 2015."

 

Indeed, with 2015 less than half over, $370 billion in buybacks have already been announced at S&P 500 accompanies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.  Those include Apple  (AAPL) and General Electric (GE), which announced $50 billion repurchase programs, and Macy's (M), which launched a $1.5 billion initiative.

 

Phillips cites three reasons why share buybacks are likely to get more attention in and around DC:

 

The growth of buybacks has "raised concerns not just among progressive lawmakers but also among some investors and analysts who suggest that the funds might be better put to other uses."

"The White House is expected to nominate two SEC commissioners, one Republican and one Democrat, to replace two departing members. It seems likely that the nominees will be pressed on this issue."

As 2016 election hype grows, candidates will be asked to weigh in on a number of financial regulatory issues, including this one.

Despite the noise, Philips doesn't see much coming from increased talk about buybacks in the next two years. Anti-buyback legislation would have a difficult time making it through a Republican-controlled -- i.e., corporation friendly -- Congress.

 

"Corporate share repurchases look likely to draw increased political attention, but rules changes are unlikely in the near term, he wrote. "To the extent that any policy changes are made, the effect on business investment is unclear but seems likely to be small."

 

While the SEC might amend rules issued in 1982 that limit the legal liability a company could face for stock repurchases -- which influence stock prices -- Phillips points to recent statements by SEC Commissioner Kara M. Stein that suggest the agency won't do so.

 

"It would be troubling if companies were mortgaging their futures -- and the futures of their employees and other stakeholders -- just to meet short-term quarterly earnings-per-share targets," Stein said in an April statement, but "a meaningful body of research disputes the notion that short-term investment horizons are in conflict with longer-term performance at all."

 

What's behind all the criticism of buybacks?

 

If you follow the thesis that a public company's objective is to deliver shareholder value, a share repurchase is one quick way to boost stock prices. Basic supply and demand principles would dictate that fewer shares on the market would drive up stock prices. Some of the debate focuses on whether pushing up share prices that way increases value in the long term.

 

 

Blackrock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink, whose New York-based investment firm manages $4.77 trillion in assets, argues that it frequently doesn't.

 

"With interest rates approaching zero, returning excessive amounts of capital to investors -- who will enjoy comparatively meager benefits from it in this environment -- sends a discouraging message about a company's ability to use its resources wisely and develop a coherent plan to create value over the long term," he wrote in a letter to several CEOs.

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with buybacks as long as they're conducted in a "measured fashion, he said, but other strategies, such as increasing spending on research and development may lead to new products that deliver longer-lasting stock gains.

 

"Corporate leaders' duty of care and loyalty is not to every investor or trader who owns their companies' shares at any moment in time, but to the company and its long-term owners," Fink wrote. He urged leaders to resist pressure from short-term shareholders for immediate returns.

 

Of the 120-plus companies that have announced buybacks so far this year, several cited a desire to simply reward investors or boost confidence in stock that executives argued was undervalued.

 

"This year's planned repurchase program is the best way to continue to drive value for our shareholders," Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan said in a March statement on the planned repurchase of $4 billion in common stock.

 

At designer apparel-maker Michael Kors (KORS), shares have dropped 35% this year as sales weakened in both the U.S. and abroad. In May, the company responded by announcing a $500 million buyback program.

 

''As the market continues to undervalue our company, myself and the management team and the board feels that's just the wrong perspective on the very, very successful and strong company that we've built globally," CEO John Idol said in May.

 

While buybacks tend to push up stock prices -- and boost earnings per share, since profit is divided over a small number of shares -- the practice may mask problems with the company's fundamentals, some critics argue. Others take a more populist tone, arguing that since many executive salaries are paid largely in stock, a share repurchase can be a clever way to boost executive compensation.

 

More significantly, buybacks can also weaken competitive strength: Cash used in share repurchases can't be spent on product development or modernizing equipment, for example. Some politicians even go so far as to link share repurchases to stagnant wages in the U.S. since 1979.

 

"In the past, this money went to productive investments in the form of higher wages, research and development, training, or new equipment," U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., argued in an April letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White. "Today, cash is being extracted from companies and placed on the sidelines."

 

Nakon boldovanog sam prestao da citam.

Mentol,

Kao da nema odlivanja kesa iz firme, pa se magicno poveca cena.

I kao da to odlivanje kesa nema uticaj na ukupne earnings koji se raspodeljuju, kao da se samo smanjuje imenilac a ne i brojilac (posto baja bruji o tome, a ne leverage efektu na povecanje eps). A ako taj mrtav kes ne povecava earnngs, pa onda je i logican i buyback ili placanje dividendi.

[Eraserhead]

Najveci tech deal ikada jednak dva puta BDP Srbije.

 

 

Predstavnici:

 

EMC - Morgan Stanley

 

DELL - Sve ostale bulge bracket

 

Multiples:

 

2.6x Rev

12,4x EBITDA

 

Dell-EMC: Timeline of a $67 billion deal

 

From a Silver Lake Partners deal to Carl Icahn pressure to EMC spinoffs to federation frustrations, here’s a look at how we got here.

 

One of the largest technology deals in history, between EMC  EMC 1.51%  and Dell, was announced on Monday, October 12, 2015. News of a possible merger or acquisition between the two enterprise-tech giants initially came as a surprise to many, but the companies have been searching for a way forward for quite some time. Here’s a look at how they got here.

 

2013

 

January: A Bloomberg report reveals that Dell has been in talks with two private-equity firms to be acquired. “My gut take is that this would be very, very difficult,” Fortune’s Dan Primack wrote.

 

February: Dell makes its deal with Silver Lake official. The figure? $24.4 billion.

 

March: Activist investor Carl Icahn acquires a significant stake in Dell.

 

May: Icahn presses Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners to increase the value of their deal, setting in motion a complicated, months-long fued.

 

September: Icahn concedes to Dell and Silver Lake.

 

October: Silver Lake discloses additional investment in Dell.

 

2014

 

May: In an interview with Andy Serwer at Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference, Michael Dell acknowledged “strong cash flow” and a “growing” IT services business that opened the company to a “much larger market.” (Video)

 

August: Onstage at the company’s annual customer conference, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger says, “Change is inevitable. Disruption is inevitable.”

 

October: Hewlett-Packard announces its split and a Dell spokesman swipes at the company, calling it “complex” and “distracting.”

 

November: One year after going private, few know whether Dell is on better financial footing than it was when it was public.

 

2015

 

April: Dell rolls out an aggressive marketing campaign redefining the company around the $1 trillion IT services market.

 

May: EMC acquires Virtustream, a cloud computing software company, for $1.2 billion.

 

June: Fortune’s Barb Darrow questions EMC’s cloud strategy. “A victory for customer choice, or just confusing?” she asks.

 

July: In an interview with Adam Lashinsky at Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Silver Lake managing partner Egon Durban expressed admiration for EMC’s “federation” model. Later in the month, a report suggests that Dell wants to spin off its CyberWorks security business in an IPO. Meanwhile EMC CEO Joe Tucci rejects the idea of breaking up during its earnings call and spins off Syncplicity, a Box and Dropbox competitor.

 

August: EMC endures continued pressure from investor Elliott Management without changing a thing. Reports suggest that VMware could buy its own parent company. Two senior VMware executives leave the company. Paul Maritz, CEO of EMC Federation member Pivotal, steps down.

 

September: A senior EMC executive defends the company’s “federation” structure at an industry event after a make-nice agreement with Elliott Management expires. “We really believe strongly that breaking up is the wrong thing to do,” he said. (For more, read this explainer on EMC’s “federation” structure.)

 

October: An initial report suggests EMC and Dell are making a deal. One week later, a Dell-EMC deal is all but confirmed, then officially confirmed. The resulting company is worth $67 billion.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Eraserhead

[Budja]

Sta radi EMC?

[Eraserhead]

Sta radi EMC?

 

Gomila stvari ali najvise data storage, cloud computing i info security. 

 

fastFT has rounded up some of the key points from Dell's pact to scoop up EMC in the biggest-ever deal in the technology sector.

 

The players

 

Dell founder Michael Dell, MSD Partners and Silver Lake confirmed their plans Monday to take EMC private.

 

Joe Tucci is chief executive of EMC, and will remain in that spot until the deal closes. After the combination is complete, Mr Dell will become CEO and chairman of the combined entity.

 

The companies

 

Mr Dell founded his eponymous company in 1984 under a different name, PC's Limited.

 

The company went public in 1988 as the era of the PC was heating up. Mr Dell and Silver Lake took it private in 2013 as smartphones and tablets were beginning to win over consumers' hearts from PCs.

 

EMC was founded in 1979, and is one of the world's biggest players in the computer storage space. It's faced trouble recently as the price of storage has dropped dramatically.

 

VMWare is the maker of popular virtualization software that lets various types of software run on what would be incompatible machines. For example, VMWare produces a program that lets users of Apple's OS X run Microsoft Windows.

 

The deal

 

EMC shareholders will receive about $33.15 a share in cash in a complex transaction that involves stock and cash. The buyers will pay $24.05 a share in cash, and 0.111 tracking shares for each share. The tracking shares will move in-line with VMWare's stock price.

 

The tie-up is expected to be financed through new common equity from Mr Dell, MSD Partners, Silver Lake and Temasek, the issuance of tracking stock, new debt and cash on hand.

 

VMWare will remain public after the transaction.

 

The deal is valued at roughly $67bn, making it the biggest-ever deal in the technology sector.

 

The timing

 

The transaction is expected to close in the second or third quarter of Dell's fiscal year, which ends February 3, 2017.

 

The conditions

 

EMC's board of directors has approved the deal. Shareholders would still need to give the pact a green light.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2015 by Eraserhead

[Ravanelli]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/ab-inbev-agrees-to-buy-sabmiller-for-104-billion-in-record-deal

[Peter Fan]

Marriott International Inc. is buying Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. in a deal valued at $12.2 billion to create the world’s largest hotel company, emerging as the surprise winner of a bidding war that reportedly included Hyatt Hotels Corp. and multiple Chinese suitors.

 

Marriott offered to pay $2 a share in cash and 0.92 of its own stock for Stamford, Connecticut-based Starwood, the companies said in a statement on Monday. The combined company will operate or franchise more than 5,500 hotels with 1.1 million rooms worldwide.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-16/marriott-buying-starwood-in-deal-valued-at-12-2-billion

[Eraserhead]

Marriott International Inc. is buying Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. in a deal valued at $12.2 billion to create the world’s largest hotel company, emerging as the surprise winner of a bidding war that reportedly included Hyatt Hotels Corp. and multiple Chinese suitors.

 

Marriott offered to pay $2 a share in cash and 0.92 of its own stock for Stamford, Connecticut-based Starwood, the companies said in a statement on Monday. The combined company will operate or franchise more than 5,500 hotels with 1.1 million rooms worldwide.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-16/marriott-buying-starwood-in-deal-valued-at-12-2-billion

 

4.2x Rev

11.4x EBITDA

 

U proseku industrije. Hilton je otisao za 14x ali to je bilo 2008 pre krize.

 

Deutsche je predstavljao Merriott, a Citi i Lazard Starwood.

[Eraserhead]

[Marcus Wulffings]

e moji švajcarci, i vama zaigrala mečka ispred vrata....

 

 

 

Following its partial takeover by General Electric (GE), the energy and transport company Alstom will axe 1,300 jobs in Switzerland.

They are among 6,500 positions being slashed across Europe following Alstom’s sale of its power generation and grid businesses to GE in November of last year. Alstom states on its website that it “is now a global player fully focused on transport”. It currently employs 5,500 people in Switzerland. 

The positions being lost in Switzerland will affect workers at its facilities at five locations in canton Aargau. Some of the operations currently taking place there will be moved to France. However, Alstom indicates that it is not planning to close any of its Swiss facilities amid the restructuring. 

The Syna union released a statement following the announcement of the layoffs in which it condemned the Swiss government for not taking enough action to keep Alstom jobs in the country. The union pointed out that Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann had held talks with Alstom leadership and declared at the time that no jobs would be lost as a result of GE's takeover. 

Schneider-Ammann said on Wednesday that he had not expected the layoffs at the time but that market conditions had changed since. Therefore, he said "a certain amount of understanding" is needed for Alstom's decision.

He also expressed hopes that Alstom and GE continue to recognise Switzerland's competitive advantage in the business world, with the most open labour market and the best job training.

Also on Wednesday, the Swiss government announced that it would extend from 12 to 18 months the amount of time during which it would give aid to employees who had their working hours cut. The aid covers up to 80% of earnings lost.

The European Union Commission first approved the €12 billion (CHF13 billion) deal between Alstom and GE with conditions in September 2015. In order for the deal to go through, GE was made to sell a part of Alstom’s gas turbine business to the Italian company Ansaldo Energia, and a corresponding 420 positions at Alstom were transferred to that company. However, Alstom’s location in Baden, Switzerland remains responsible for turbine maintenance.