Sun rallies investors despite possible Oracle blocker

Get a haircut!

This is where these type of management contracts are just plain wrong and in my view -driving the unscrupulous behaviour. What do you expect if you offer the CE0 a massive amount of money if he sells the company and its employees down the river.

And Jonathan - get a haircut!! I'm sure you can now afford it.

My jacket is the one with the RIF.

There's a bit of a snag...

IBM walked away and one of the 'unnamed sources' has cited that IBM balked at the exec payout package.

I don't know, but did Oracle balk or did the numbers change?

Hence the potential for a lawsuit because of the fiduciary requirements of the officers. That is, one could argue that the 'excessive' 'fat' executive payout is actually a payoff at the expense of the shareholders.

Its interesting that IBM walked away and now looks more 'evil' than ever. Sun customers appear to view Oracle as their 'white knight'. In truth, the potential synergy of Sun and Oracle would mean that there should be more of a premium, albeit, when has Larry paid a premium for anything instead of buying at fire sale prices?

@Tim Spence

Sun turning in to Yahoo!, in what respect.

Sun was the darling of the 'dot bomb' world. In other words, the dot com boom customers were buying a lot of hardware. Dot bomb hits, Sun loses customers, earnings and stock takes a hit. Sun also failed to monetize Java. (Not that they had to sell Java, but to produce and ship software solutions around Java. However Sun was/is a hardware company and thought about giving away the software to sell more hardware.

Your reference to Yahoo! is that they walked away from Microsoft because they wanted a better deal and Microsoft said no. Yahoo! then got nailed.

If Sun does walk away from Oracle, that too will happen because the current stock price is based on the news that Oracle will buy Sun. That doesn't happen, the stock goes back to the $2-4 range.

However, there is one other 'white knight' in the background. Cisco. Cisco and Sun combined would be a very interesting combo that would really scare IBM , Oracle and even Microsoft.

Why Cisco hadn't stepped forward is beyond me. Perhaps they were politely asked not to and that until 'California' takes off, they didn't want to rock the boat? ;-)

The author again revises history...

'Java users don't get a golden parachute from the Oracle, but they can - and are - looking for ways to avoid becoming beholden to a single company for their entire middleware, business applications, and hardware. They are investigating Red Hat and JBoss.'

Methinks that the author has the "Anybody butt IBM" attitude. Note: the spelling of 'but' because his assumption is that IBM doesn't have any 'middleware' or 'appserver' that runs Java. (Hmmm and of course IBM isn't heavily involved in the JCP unlike Oracle...) ;-)

I chose the tomb because the author clearly doesn't know the industry, or wrote this very quickly as she/he/it or (s/h/it) was nursing a nasty hangover and was late for his deadline....

Rewarding Corporate Greed

Schwartz and his lieutenants Fowler, Gadre and Papadopoulos have been in charge of Sun since Schwartz took over as a COO and President in 2004. Over that time, despite Schwartz's numerous statements how everything is getting better, Sun's stock has plummeted to less than half of its value, while, for example, HPQ stock value has increased by 62%.

Now, they are all getting bonuses for their great accomplishments. Another AIG or GM. And where is Barack Obama fighting corporate greed?

Also, apparently just to "justify" their greed, Schwartz and friends gave $800-900 million to all Sun VPs and Directors, so that it does not look like only the top dogs are getting paid. Why the fuck this money go to them not to shareholders?!