Palm trades 25% stake to Elevation Partners for $325 million
By Will Park on Thursday, October 25th, 2007 at 5:55 PM PST In Announcements, Financial/Corporate News, Palm, Partnerships
Palm’s been falling behind on the innovation front that gave them the market edge all those years ago – there’s no denying that. But, things could be on the up and up for the laggard smartphone manufacturer. Palm (NSDQ: PALM) has just announced that they have finally secured the $325 million deal from Elevation Partners (U2’s Bono’s private equity firm) in return for a 25% stake in the company.
The deal includes a board of directors shake-up member, taking the board of directors from a group of 8 member to 9 heads. Jon Rubinstein, former senior VP of hardware engineering at Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), has been appointed as executive chairman of the board. Fred Anderson and Roger McNamee, managing directors and co-founders of Elevation Partners, are also on the new board.
Could this be just the corporate shake-up that Palm needs to claw its way back to at least a fraction of its by-gone glory? We’ll have to wait and see. Unless Palm does something incredible with their new OS, we’re not going to hold our breath. Innovation is the key here, and for Palm, it seems that they’re banking on a new board of directors to steer this lost ship back to profitable waters.
[Via: MocoNews]
