By David Sims
[email protected]
The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music
is Swing Brother, Swing, a great
three-CD collection of classic Big Band, current selection Benny Goodman’s “Don’t
Be That Way:”
If at first you don’t succeed, keep it simple the second
time around: The Chinese company CDC Corporation has announced that CDC Software, a wholly owned subsidiary
of CDC Corporation, has presented a new
proposal to the board of directors of Onyx Software for a strategic transaction
that would combine Onyx Software with
CDC Software.
CDC Software management is now awaiting a response of Onyx’s
board of directors. Onyx said it would review the proposal.
Under the terms of CDC Software’s new proposal to Onyx, each
Onyx shareholder would have a choice to receive, for each Onyx share, consideration
consisting of either all-cash, or cash-and-shares in CDC Corporation.
In the event an Onyx shareholder elects to receive all-cash consideration, such
shareholder would receive, for each Onyx share, $4.57 per share in cash. Such a
price per share, CDC officials claim,” would represent a premium of
approximately 20 percent from a recent five-day trading average for Onyx
shares.”
In the event an Onyx shareholder elects to receive cash-and-shares, such
shareholder would receive, for each Onyx share, $4.78 per share comprised of 50
percent (or $2.39) in cash and 50 percent (or $2.39) in registered Class A
Common Shares of CDC Corporation. A $4.78 price per Onyx share would represent
a premium of approximately 25 percent from a recent five-day trading average
for Onyx shares.
John Clough, chairman of the executive committee for CDC Corporation and vice
chairman of the board for CDC Software, said CDC Software still really, really
wants to acquire Onyx, particularly for its Pivotal CRM division.
“The benefits to shareholders and customers are clear and
substantial,” said Clough, ticking off complementary industry specialization,
products, geographic markets, sales channels and marketing strategies: “On
virtually parallel paths, Onyx and Pivotal pioneered the mid-enterprise CRM
markets and by joining forces, we have the opportunity to become an even more
significant force in the industry.”
While CDC Software was disappointed with Onyx’s response to CDC’s original
proposal in early January 2006, CDC Software say they have been “even more
surprised by the lack of interest” it has received from Onyx since then. “In
January, we stated that CDC Software remains flexible and open to discussing
alternatives to our original proposal,” says Clough.
Hong Kong-based CDC had offered to combine all the assets of
CDC Software with Onyx, and $50 million in cash, for a majority of Onyx’s
common stock, keeping Onyx a publicly-listed company. Onyx’s management
announced right around New Year’s Day 2006 they were rejecting the deal.
At the time the Puget Sound Business
Journal reported “Onyx officials gave a variety of reasons for turning down
the offer, including: CDC Software assets are performing poorly; CDC lacks a
sustained history of profitable operations and has a poor record of delivering
shareholder value; and synergies between the Onyx and CDC product lines are
limited.”
Specifically, Dow Jones reported, Onyx
said on Jan. 5 its board unanimously rejected CDC’s offer for being “highly
dilutive” to Onyx shareholders. Plus they didn’t think there would be anything
but “limited synergies” between the companies. And they didn’t like CDC’s idea
that Onyx pay a premium for CDC Software division assets.
“One of the big benefits of an enterprise CRM product is the
ability to access vital customer data, regardless of device or locale,” noted
Todd Chambers, Chief Marketing Officer at Onyx.
Two days ago CDC announced they were forming a new board of
directors, separate from the CDC Corporation board, to “focus on key growth
initiatives and help the organization to become an independent, standalone
company,” CDC officials said.
Peter Yip, vice chairman of the board for CDC Corporation
will serve as executive chairman of the CDC Software board. John Clough, a
board member and chairman of the executive committee for CDC Corporation will
serve as vice chairman of the board for CDC Software. Additionally, “the
company is in discussion with US-based board member candidates with deep
enterprise software experience,” officials say.
…
And today, in 1857 in Boston was born a woman who would
change the face of the American publishing industry, who would save countless
marriages and answer even more prayers: Fannie Merritt Farmer, the person who wrote the first cookbook in American –
probably world – history.
While working as a housekeeper and cook, one of her jobs was
to take care of a young girl named Marcia Shaw. She taught Marcia how to cook,
and wrote down simple, precise cooking instructions to help her remember.
“At the time,” Writer’s Almanac says, “writing
down recipes was almost unheard of. People learned to cook by doing.
Measurements were also inexact. Everything was made with a pinch of this and a
dash of that.” But after attending the Boston Cooking School, Fannie Farmer
realized that a book full of precise instructions on how to prepare a wide
variety of dishes “might help many young women become better cooks.”
So she compiled all the recipes she had ever learned, along
with advice on how to set a table, how to scald milk, to cream butter, to
remove stains and to clean a copper boiler.
At first, “all the publishers turned her down because they
reasoned that these were all things young women could learn from their mothers.
Finally, Little Brown agreed to publish the book if Fannie Farmer would pay for
the printing of the first three thousand copies.”
The book sold over four million copies.
…
IBM has announced that it has signed a long-term contract with Solectron
Corporation, a vendor of electronics manufacturing and integrated
supply chain services, for indirect procurement services across 17 countries.
The value of the contract is not being disclosed.
IBM will manage more than $1.2 billion per year of indirect
spend in areas such as temporary contract services, office equipment,
utilities, and telecommunications. Core to the project is the implementation of
IBM’s complete Procure-To-Pay procurement product that will be integrated with
Solectron’s internal systems and controls. IBM’s product will enable web-based
requisitioning as well as efficient procurement and supplier payment.
Elements of the overall procurement product include IBM
commodity experts, a global contact center and an accounts payable processing
center supporting Solectron suppliers and employees around the globe. Solectron
will also have access to a full range of transformation and maintenance
services from IBM.
The hosted Procure-To-Pay environment and business operation
will go live in the autumn of 2006 in North America and will then be fully
deployed globally by early spring 2007.
...
“Heated debate was ignited last week when researchers dared
to suggest that RFID was vulnerable to viruses,” reports trade journal ContractorUK.
The paper, “Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?” by Melanie R. Rieback,
Bruno Crispo and Andrew Tanenbaum, from the Computer Systems Group at Vrije
University, Amsterdam, showed that an RFID tag can contain damaging data which
may cause harm to the reading computer systems.
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