Disqus
Just when I thought that Motorola shareholders would be happy with its sale to Google for $12.5 billion, it turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, shareholders were hoping that the sale price would be so much higher that they decided to sue Motorola Mobility for the insult. I guess selling itself at a 63% premium over its closing price the business day before its sale wasn’t nearly enough.
BusinessWeek reports:
Investor John W. Keating’s complaint, which was filed yesterday at the state courthouse in Chicago, also names Google and nine members of Motorola Mobilty’s board as defendants. The companies announced their agreement earlier in the day.
“The offered consideration does not compensate shareholders for the company’s intrinsic value and stand-alone alternatives going forward, nor does it compensate shareholders for the company’s value as a strategic asset for Google,” Keating claims.
So, are the shareholders suing over just the “intrinsic and strategic” value of Motorola Mobility? Something that might be considered intangible?
Motorola Mobility, spun off from Motorola Inc. in January, sold 11 million devices including 4.4 million smartphones and 440,000 tablet computers last quarter, it said last month, reporting net revenue of $3.3 billion in the second quarter, a 28 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.
“Motorola has experienced an economic resurgence since separating into two separate companies,” Keating said in a complaint filed on behalf of all Motorola Mobility stockholders. “The Android smartphone technology it relies on continues to gain ground on Apple’s iPhone.”
Oh, I guess not. $3.3 billion in one quarter is about a quarter of the total cost of Google’s acquisition, so I suppose it’s only fair to long-term shareholders that Motorola consider a higher price. But it didn’t, and so now those shareholders are pissed off.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, as investors are looking to file a class-action lawsuit against Motorola Mobility and CEO Sanjay Jha.
About The Author
Marc Flores
Marc has been a mobile fanatic for the better part of a decade and has had more devices pass through his hands than he would care to count. Originally from Los Angeles and briefly in San Francisco, Marc now lives in Brooklyn where, unlike Will Park, he longs for simpler times and simpler technology. All the while, he writes about gadgets and wireless technology as he tinkers, hacks and ultimately breaks most of his gadgets in the process. Marc has written about the mobile industry for Boy Genius Report, MobileCrunch, Laptop Magazine and has had his work appear in the Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, CrunchGear and more.
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