There’s nothing like starting a technical conference, like Novell’s BrainShare, off with a bang. Or, in this case telling Elliot Associates’ unwelcome offer of not quite $2-billion for the company that Novell has no interest in selling out, not for that little anyway.
I think this was a smart move by Novell’s management. I think if Elliot Associates were to buy Novell it would end up killing the company and its Linux distributions: SUSE Linux and openSUSE.
Make no mistake about it. A cool $2-billion is a lot of money. But, to quote from the company’s rejection note: “$5.75 per share in cash is inadequate and that it undervalues the Company’s franchise and growth prospects.” I’d agree with that. After all, Novell has almost a billion in the bank.
The more important question is where does Novell, as a business, go from here?