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Technology Stocks : VLSI Technology - Waiting for good news from NASDAQ !!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: patrick tang who wrote (6143)	4/8/1999 1:33:00 PM
From: Linda Kaplan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6565

Did you ever take a position in VLSI, either long or short? I know you said you were looking to go long back in February. Right now the stock is just sitting there -- there was some selling but not enough to drive it down very much. I own a stock that was halved yesterday. Now people wanted out of that one. This one... there was a small amount of exiting on the news today but not much, really. People are still waiting to see what the offer's going to be. Linda

To: patrick tang who wrote (6143)	4/8/1999 1:37:00 PM
From: otter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6565

Time to review, I think... No disrespect intended at all... I think you are not right. My fear is that you may be. Here is what I think I really know: 1. Lazard Freeres (sp?) - a firm whose focus is mergers and acquisition recently took a >5% position with VLSI without disclosing their reason before Philips initiated a hostile takeover bid. 2. Philips initiated a hostile takeover bid after being rebuffed several times by Al Stein. 3. The day the Philips bid became official, Lehman began sitting on the bid at no less than 18+ and only recently stopped. That the price of VLSI was above 17 a share was the single reason why the number of shares tendered to Philips were trivial. 4. A few days before the Philips bid, Al Stein exercised a ton of options and took a loan from the company at very advantageous rates in order to do it. It may or may not be coincidence, but what is true is that this is an action Al would have been incapable of doing after the initiation of the hostile bid. I haven't heard if these options were qualified or not, and it is possible these options would have been not exercisable if Al were to have been deposed. 5. There are claims that STM(?) Thompson is behind the Lehman activity; and that discussions have been occurring between them and VLSI. There has been no public confirmation. That notwithstanding, Lehman could NOT have been an agent for VLSI. They might have been doing it as an arb play but they could have, in my opinion, begun much earlier than they did. The only reasonable explanation I can come up with as to why Lehman kicked in only on that Friday (it was Friday, wasn't it?) was that it was to deny shares to PHG. If profit were the ONLY motive, then there was no reason to begin only on that day, was there? This, in my mind is very telling - although indirect - evidence that there is another company in the wings. 6. We still don't know who - if anybody - is behind Lazard. It is possible that they got wind of this deal ahead of time and took a position... but why was it only marginally greater than the 5% that requires disclosure? If it were only 4/9%, we would have never known. 7. For reasons I still don't fully understand, it has been said several times and has been published in the press that it would be very difficult for a US based company to offer to purchase VLSI using stock. Cash offers, however, are much easier to deal with. That notwithstanding, there has been speculation - not supported by any public statement - that there is at least some marginal interest by TI and IBM. Speculation about LSI has been denied. On the downside, that this stock has been essentially flat for an extended period suggests you are not wrong. If there really were others involved, one would think that there would be speculative upward pressure on this stock. Three times we've hit 20 and three times, we've fallen back. I still do NOT understand that...