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Back in October a Hedge fund started buying shares in my Company to a stage that they have got 23% of the shares now. Effectively with $100 million in the bank and a very undervalued stock price, we were very attractive to them.
To combat this we have employed a poison pill approach as well as a one-off $2 per share pay-off in order to unload some of the excess cash to make us less attractive and also in the hope that they would take this windfall and 'do one'.
According to El Reg[^] and an e-mail from my CEO today this has failed and the Hedge Fund has written an open letter criticising the Boards insistence to move into the cloud market and wants to put 3 of it's own Directors on the board.
Word is that the Hedge Fund will just rape us, and then Liquidate us. And with it get reported in El Reg amongst other places I am worried now. Has anybody else had experience of these funds? Should I get out now?
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23% is not a majority, so they should need considerable support to do anything really drastic - the existing board should be able to weather the storm even with shareholder appointed directors, unless it has a massive psychosis to start with.
It may be that they do have good ideas which could help the company (I doubt it, the letter implies they want dividends and other short-term gains rather than the long term survival of the company)
I wouldn't jump ship - if enough of the good people quit then the companies survival becomes less likely rather than more - but I would keep my eyes and ears open, particularly if I enjoyed working where I am.
If you get an email telling you that you can catch Swine Flu from tinned pork then just delete it. It's Spam.
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I do not think they have any real clout until they hit 30%, at which point I believe they need to notify an intent to takeover / buyout or not.
If they are not happy with the way the business is being run, they can always sell their stock holding and move onto someone else whose business model and direction meets with their expectations.
Sit tight at the moment I would say.
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Maybe you should start buying stock and try to get in on the raping and pillaging yourself.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
Shed Petition[ ^]
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Wish I had the money to do so. A guy I work with bought a load when they were less than a dollar a share a few years back they now regularly sit at around $12-$14 and he's always rubbing it in how much money they've made him.
That price is seriously undervalued too, as the market doesn't fully understand what we do (it thinks we're a drive manufacturer, we're a 'storage solution provider').
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The Reincarnation wrote: the market doesn't fully understand what we do (it thinks we're a drive manufacturer, we're a 'storage solution provider').
I don't fully understand what you do... 
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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Is it not obvious - they provide drawers, cabinets, cupboards and boxes in a variety of sizes and colours! Solutions (shudder)to your storage problems!
Seriously though the first marketing wonk that though adding 'solutions' to one of their BS phrases was a good idea should be strung up by the 'nads. If half the effort spent on coming up with this rubbish was devoted to making the product better the world would be a better place. I don't know, when I was a lad mutter, grumble etc.
Andy B
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