Bloomberg reports that Dell, who have lost a third of their value last year, are investigating the option of becoming a privately-owned company. According to the report, they’re in hush-hush discussion with two private equity firms about buying out their own stock.
For more, here’s Bloomberg’s video report:
I’m not sure (and neither is the anchor in the video) what taking Dell private would do. Would it let them take corrective actions that would otherwise not be possible as a publicly-traded company — perhaps actions that might make shareholders balk?
Dell’s woes must be amusing to Apple fans, especially those who kept the faith during those dark pre-return-of-Steve times in the mid-late ’90s when the company appeared to be circling the drain. MG Siegler seems to have beaten me to the schadenfreude-laden punch, but it’s almost my duty as a Mac user to repeat Michael Dell’s infamous 1997 quote about Apple:
“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”