I’ve never seen anything good come out of PE delisting like this. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.
SUSE to go private
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Re: SUSE to go private
#22What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
Dell I think would be one? Basically you get rid of the quarterly reporting grind and it lets you focus on the business even if certain initiatives are going to depress shorter term results, but pay off over the long term.
Re: SUSE to go private
#23What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
Dell I think would be one? Basically you get rid of the quarterly reporting grind and it lets you focus on the business even if certain initiatives are going to depress shorter term results, but pay off over the long term.
Re: SUSE to go private
#24What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
That's the purpose of PE firms. They accept pre-investment in this sort of scheme, and do this with several companies at once over a 5-7 year total period, taking a slice of the revenue with no capital risk of their own, and the investors get a good 5-7 years of 12-18% ROI. The companies are trash at the end of the cycle but hey, that's capitalism.
Source: I was "lucky" enough to work for a tech startup through its IPO period after which it was acquired by PE, and exactly the above happened. We had the opportunity to "buy in" to the investment cycle with our own money, and so they had a pretty detailed presentation about exactly how this all works. I was somewhat surprised by how honest they were willing to be with the employees (although it did take a little bit of reading between the lines).
Re: SUSE to go private
#25What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
Well, SUSE after Novell was in a woeful state, EQT got them to where they are right now.
I actually think this has the same potential of a “good” PE move as the Dell success.
Re: SUSE to go private
#26What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
None. Private equity's entire business model is to suck the quality and staffing out of the product and make money off the gap between the product getting cheaper and people moving to a viable alternative.
PE is basically a parasitic business, designed to suck money out of the purchased company until it collapses. You do this by borrowing a ton of money to purchase the company. Then for the privilege the company pays the buyer a special bonus that conveniently covers its costs (and often more) out of the cash it had on hand when bought. Then the buyer continues to get various payment streams, like guaranteed dividends or all sorts of other obligations, until the company collapses.
Sad to say I'm not exaggerating.
I say "basically" because there are a couple of exceptions. Dell was purchased in a special deal with the founder so that the company actually operates but the founder was enriched in the process.
VC is a branch of private equity (an almost invisible pimple on the PE business TBH) where they don't buy the whole company and hope to make money on the IPO. But it's a small business: there are numerous companies out there with an asset base larger than the entire VC industry.
Re: SUSE to go private
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dell I think would be one? Basically you get rid of the quarterly reporting grind and it lets you focus on the business even if certain initiatives are going to depress shorter term results, but pay off over the long term.
Dell is a special case because it was the original founder who delisted the stock. Not some Bain Capital type firm that was just buying it to suck the marrow out of the bones before tossing it in the trash.
Re: SUSE to go private
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dell I think would be one? Basically you get rid of the quarterly reporting grind and it lets you focus on the business even if certain initiatives are going to depress shorter term results, but pay off over the long term.
that feels a little different because i thought michael dell was a large part of that “private equity”.
Re: SUSE to go private
#29What are the success stories of private equity firms taking over a corporation? (Where success is the products are still made, quality and staffing is maintained at previous levels)
Re: SUSE to go private
#30While in many ways not comparable to what's happened with Redhat, with Suse turning to the dark side one wonders how much longer Canonical will last before doing something similar.
Make no doubt about it, private equity is all about short term shareholder returns. That's not a bad things in principle but if you don't want to wake up yet again with your distro having the rug pulled out from under it, switch to Debian.