CompuServe Messages

As far as I can tell, every time the situation changed, everyone withdrew any tentative offers or bids and talked to their lawyers for two weeks. I'm sure that if someone had made a formal offer, it would have been considered. The difference between how much the value went down in the last six months and the amount you might have been overpaying because you guessed wrong on the available assets would probably have been in the bidders favor. The problem was most likely that the finance people didn't put up carte blanche money. Given that, I doubt they are willing to put up much more. Pulling numbers out of the air, if I have a business plan that says: $50 million – buy C= $500 million – start new production line and build less than a million machines $250 million – aggresive marketing plan $100 million – moderate R&D If I have this, I'm not going to worry all that much about what is included for the $50 million. A pile of a few thousand machines one way or the other wouldn't matter. A few piles of inexpensive parts one way or the other wouldn't matter. I'd just pay the $50 million so that I could get on with the rest of my plans. If it had to go to $75 or $100, I probably wouldn't hesitate, as long as it meant I could start now. On the other hand, if my plan called for $50 million – buy Commodore $1 million – assemble every machine possible with the supply of parts available, making a good profit off those, then sell off patents, etc. Then I guess I'd worry about every nickle and dime and EXACTLY what physical inventory was available.