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Tuesday March 7, 5:25 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Management Insights, Inc.
C. Robert Coates Announces Resignation From Inprise Board of Directors
DALLAS, March 7 /PRNewswire/ -- C. Robert Coates, CEO of Management Insights, Inc., has resigned from the Board of Directors of Inprise Corporation (Nasdaq: INPR - news).
Mr. Coates resigned on Sunday, Feb. 6, at 8:00 am, prior to the vote on the merger of Inprise and Corel Corporation (Nasdaq: CORL - news). Mr. Coates plans to communicate the reasons for his resignation in a future letter to shareholders and in a detailed letter to Inprise that Inprise must then disclose in an SEC Form 8-K filing.
Mr. Coates says he will oppose the merger unless it results in substantially higher prices for Inprise shareholders and/or can be shown by Inprise's CEO to clearly benefit Inprise's customers. ``Corel has a great Linux distribution, and I wish them the best in their battle against Microsoft. I would like to see the two companies form some type of alliance, perhaps like the one Inprise just announced with TurboLinux.'
He hopes that the Inprise Board will consider other offers for parts or all of Inprise Corporation or continue to operate Inprise as an independent company so that it can follow through on the many positive press releases issued in the last five months. ``Dale Fuller, Inprise's interim CEO, has publicly stated that the company would be profitable by the third quarter of 2000,' noted Mr. Coates.
``I recently provided Inprise with a strategic roadmap designed to leverage Inprise's technological assets to maximize shareholder value', said Mr. Coates. ``The proposal is based around the 'Internet community' model that has been very successfully implemented by CMGI and the Internet Capital Group. In effect, I proposed transforming Inprise into a community of synergistic businesses. Some of these businesses would be majority owned and managed operating companies, such as Borland International, Visigenic, and Interbase, while Inprise would participate in others through equity investments via the Inprise Venture Fund. Inprise management would identify and foster synergies between the combined portfolio of companies to maximize their business results, and at the appropriate times Inprise would realize the value of these entities via IPOs or mergers.
``This approach maximizes the overall return to Inprise shareholders, while providing customers the broadest, most complete range of product solutions. It also opens pre-IPO opportunities to Inprise employees, which is a great help in retaining employees in Silicon Valley-based companies.'
Mr. Coates currently owns 3,005,440 shares of Inprise Corporation.
About Management Insights, Inc.
Management Insights, Inc. (MII) is a diversified management consulting, venture capital, and investment firm. Its customers include a large number of Fortune 500 companies. Among its public investments are large equity stakes in Inprise Corporation, Evolving Systems and Northfield Labs. Venture investments include RevHire (www.revhire.com), a full service recruiting organization specializing in the fields of recruitment research, contract recruiting, executive search, recruitment event management, and recruitment advertising, and RevTax, a soon to be announced Internet B2B company serving corporate tax departments.
SOURCE: Management Insights, Inc.
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