SCO still hanging on
October 25, 2007 Leave a comment
After filing for Chapter 11, SCO may have found a buyer for its UNIX operations. From the article:
While still fighting in the courts and fresh from filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month, The SCO Group could soon be selling its steadily-declining Unix business.
In a filing in US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, the Lindon, Utah-based company said it had received a “potential” $US36 million offer for its Unix business from JGD Management, an umbrella business of New York-based investment firm, York Capital Management. The filing has been posted on the Groklaw.com website, which has been tracking the legal records of the ongoing lawsuits between SCO, IBM, Novell and others. In it, SCO reports that the offer includes money for its Unix business, litigation claims and for litigation expenses.
The bid is subject to approval by the bankruptcy court, according to the filing, and competitive bids could still be accepted from other potential buyers.
SCO filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization last month as it began seeking ways to stay in business amid mounting expenses and several legal rulings that have hurt its legal fights with IBM and Novell.
If SCO gets out of the Unix business, it would continue solely as a mobile application platform vendor, which it has been working to become over the last several years.
York is a large hedge fund-like capital management company, so at first I didn’t think there was anything odd about this. It was probably an LBO in which the company thought it could squeeze some value out of a product that had been neglicted. Fairly popular stuff these days. But, it gets odd from here. As noted on Groklaw:
JGD Management Corporation has its principal executive offices at 1118 East Green Street Pasadena, California 91106 (http://www.secinfo.com/d12TC3.v51a.htm)
If you google the address the first match is a reference to a page on Edgar which provides the Form 4 (any of you US business types know what that is?) for a company known as Arrowhead Research Corp which has one R Bruce Stewart as its
CEO and Chairman of the Board.
(http://edgar.brand.edgar-online.com/EFX_dll/EDGARpro.dll?FetchFilingHTML1?SessionID=T-hII2bI2EHwHrP&ID=3669175)
R Bruce Stewart founded Acacia Research Corporation in March 1991.
(http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/personinfo/FromPersonIdPersonTearsheet.jhtml?passedPersonId=927443).
Yes, that would be the same Acacia that is currently suing Red Hat and Novell. Quite some coincidence. I haven’t had a chance to personally verify all the information from the Groklaw post, but the links are all there for you to do so. If you’d like to do some additional research:
http://www.secinfo.com/d14D5a.u4d4r.htm
http://sec.edgar-online.com/2004/05/17/0001015402-04-002107/Section7.asp
–jeremy
Jeremy's Blog 