Lynn,
Z is a long time disk drive investor/observor. And frankly, I think he is right to bash the deal (see previous message). Not so much for the Veritas part of the deal (though even that isn't completely kosher), but for the other part. Both Veritas and Seagate management make out well, but stockholders don't, and Seagate management has a fiduciary to the stockholders which they clearly are NOT living up to.
On the Veritas part of the deal: they have recently sold off their Sandisk holdings. Well, they had as part of their deal with Sandisk the option to distribute a fair percentage of sandisk products. Those products are just now coming into very high and rapidly growing demand. They just chucked it entirely. They also arguable didn't get the best price they could for Sandisk stock by selling it so abruptly, despite its huge recent run. They crushed the stock while doing so, and if they had sold it in a more discrete manner, holding it longer, they could have realized a great more. They also could have realized a great deal more if they developed a partnership with Sandisk.
But after they dumped Shugart, this wasn't part of their "plan". Their plan, for some time it would appear, was to buy for themselves $1 worth of assets for less than 15 cents. This is shrewd from their point of view (and Perlman and Luzco certainly are shrewd), but a rip off from the stockholders' point of view, which was paying them to manage an ongoing business. They would rather--correctly from their individual point of view--manage it for themselves. It simply isn't ethical, and may also be illegal. We'll have to see.
s. |
