Plan B
>If that happens, Michael Dell will be out of a job – but with $12bn in assets in his equity
>firm, there are worse things that could happen to him
Plan B: buy Nokia and Nokia-Siemens Networks
The special committee of Dell board members that is reviewing the two proposals that will decide the fate of their company have told the Michael Dell/Silver Lake Partners consortium that they are not willing to change the voting rules, as the consortium had requested. And so the ongoing saga of Michael Dell's attempt to take …
or plan B might be to let Icahn wreck it ruin it then sell what is left for a few hundred million and Mike can take it private for the total sum of his 2014 pocket money.
Sad really as that would be some hard work and Dell really does need to make some moves there have been some great changes over the last few months.
Seems pretty certain indeed that Michael is unlikely to increase his offer, and likewise the vote is likely to decline the deal. Based on share price history Michael's offer is not undervaluing the company but pretty fair price.
Question remains will they be shortsighted/greedy enough to take up Icahn's offer. If they don't then there might be round two later on and most likely the share price has fallen more.
If they do take up Icahn's offer, then Michael will still have the option to buy what's left of Dell (the company) for pittance. Problem there is that Icahn would've sold anything of any worth, so they would need to rebuild the parts that Michael had wanted to keep. One way to reorg I guess. That is if he even would be interested in the wreck.
The real losers in that case would be all the employees that would've been shown the door.
This is an interesting point/question. A couple days ago a poster posited that Dell's price was putting a cap on the share price that is Keeping Carl's bid from looking possible. I'm inclined to agree with you, that Mike's offer has put a floor under the price because people think they can make a few percent when he buys at his price.
When both bids fail, we will perform the experiment. If you own Dell stock: hang on to your hat kids because it's going to be a heck of an amusement park ride.