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Businesses IT

BMC Going Private In $6.9 Billion Deal 49

itwbennett writes "In a much-anticipated move, IT infrastructure management software vendor BMC has agreed to be acquired for $6.9 billion by a private investment consortium headed up by Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital. The deal is expected to close this year."
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BMC Going Private In $6.9 Billion Deal

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  • Again? (Score:4, Funny)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Monday May 06, 2013 @01:03PM (#43644151) Homepage Journal

    I thought Leyland had already bought BMC.

  • Every Time Footprints [numarasoftware.com] Up's a version, The Company gets bought out.

    So far...
    BMC
    Numara
    Unipress
    Footprints Software
    And I'm probably missing a company or two in there.

  • Goodbye BMC! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 06, 2013 @01:19PM (#43644373)

    I was on the receiving end of a Golden Gate Capital acquisition, management was gutted and everything that made our company a success for over 40 years was thrown to the wind.

    Those of us that were left had to pick up the slack with inexperienced management and shaky client relationships. It wasn't long before most of the senior developers in our branch hit the eject button making things worse.

    Then they took away benefits and put on a wage freeze, it became apparent by the end that really they just wanted the clients we had but not our business.

    Which was sad, for a time we had something great.

  • Patrol -> Nagios

    Control-M -> ????

    before the licensing costs go through the roof.

    (I predict that they'll be laying off software developers once Bain starts "improving" the business.)

  • by T.E.D. ( 34228 ) on Monday May 06, 2013 @02:03PM (#43644909)

    This is the sad fate in store for companies that are relatively cheap to buy compared to how much debt they can still take on.

    Some vulture capital [realclearpolitics.com] firm will swoop in, borrow a bunch of money to take them over, then force the poor company to pay them back for the takeover costs, plus every other last cent the victim is now capable of borrowing. They make millions (sometimes) billions without risking a cent once the takeover is complete.

    Everybody wins. Well, except perhaps for the banks and their investors when the companies go backrupt. And the workers who thought they were dedicating their toil to making products people wanted, not creating temporary paper value for rich folks to come in and loot.

    This is why they call themselves "job craters". They don't spell it that way in print of course, but we all know what they mean when they say it.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      And the workers who thought they were dedicating their toil to making products people wanted

      Having been involved in implementing a big pile of BMC stuff here at work, I've gotta say that I don't think any of those are at BMC.

    • Your post contains a lot of contradictions.

      First, private equity firms do invest a lot of their own money in the firms they buy (hence the name. They invest private money (that of their owners/shareholders) into equity by buying firms). If they didn't banks would be rightly suspicious of the deal since the private equity firm would get paid no matter what happened.

      Second, because of this, it is in the interests of the private equity firm that the company do well. In theory, if the PE firm bought a cont

      • First, private equity firms do invest a lot of their own money in the firms they buy (hence the name. They invest private money (that of their owners/shareholders) into equity by buying firms). If they didn't banks would be rightly suspicious of the deal since the private equity firm would get paid no matter what happened.

        Not exactly. They invest some "own" money and borrow the rest from a bank. The bank has no conscience either, so it is also in it. It is a kind of slavery where the slaves have to pay for their own chains.

        Second, because of this, it is in the interests of the private equity firm that the company do well. In theory, if the PE firm bought a controlling share (say 51%) they would be in a position to screw over the remaining 49%, for example by selling the firm's assets to some other company owned by the PE firm, at a discount rate. This would most likely be illegal. Apart from this mechanism, the interests of the PE firm are exactly the same as the remaining shareholders: to get as much money from the firm as possible.

        Now you contradict yourself. The goal is to squeeze as money as possible out of the victim. That is not the same as having that firm run well. On the contrary. The victim is squeezed dry, and the predators go on to the next victim.

        Finally, if it is more profitable to sell a companies assets and fire all its workers, then this is a good thing. If you don't already believe this then I don't have space to prove it in this post, but the general idea is that labor and capital are just like any other commodity, and so a company whose share price today is less than the value of its in place assets, is like a giant inefficient machine that consumes capital and labor for what is effectively negative profit.

        Capital is just a number typed in a computer if a bank is part of the robber

      • by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

        First, private equity firms do invest a lot of their own money in the firms they buy

        They "invest" that money, then take every penny back from the company coffers the instant they take it over. The only way any of that initial money is at any kind of risk is if either they fail to take over the company (and their run at it didn't drive up the stock price before they bailed), or if it turns out the company can't borrow enough money to cover their nut once they take it over. Assuming they did their homework right, there is very little risk there, and it is very breif.

        it is in the interests of the private equity firm that the company do well

        To a certian extent this

    • This is not vulture capitalism. Vulture funds, like the birds, feed off dead corpses. I don’t think BMC is dead or dying company. I am not saying that Bain doesn’t do this stuff – but this is not the case.

      As for vulture capitalism themselves – do they harm dying companies by restructuring them? Is a slow death better then chopping off the dead flesh so a smaller, healthier, company can emerge? I mean, look at what the vulture capitalist Warren Buffet did with broadcloth make Berkshir

      • when they say 'Vulture Capitalist'. Despite the etymology when people use the phrase 'Vulture Capitalist' they mean buying a company with the specific intention of stealing everything of value in a legal manner. See numerous examples elsewhere in this thread.

        Moreover, the narrative we're being sold is that you buy a company because you want it to succeed. This is why we allow "job creators" to have so much wealth. It's the justification we're given for wealth inequity that investors will risk their capi
        • That is just plain sloppy use of language – it like lumping all football players together – no matter if they are a striker or a quarterback.

          In your context, covers the whole private capital / hedge fund. I would just be simpler – and more accurate - to drop the vulture and just derided capitalism.

          However, in the private capital / hedge fund world, vulture capital means something else.

          http://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/vulturefund.asp [investopedia.com]

          Sure, they like to go by fancy names, such as distress

          • by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

            This is like complaining that you don't like the way everyone else in the world uses the word "hacker". You may have a bit of a point, but human language is about communication, so majority really does rule. Sorry. I hate what the same process has done to the words "hacker" and "enormity", but I only get one vote.

            In this case, I don't think its that bad though. Essentially, "Vulture Capital Firm" has come to mean something a bit different than "Vulture Fund". A "Vulture Capital Firm" is simply a supposed

          • I think the term slipped in because in the choice between "Venture capitalist" and "Vulture capitalist", the latter clearly sounds more appropriate (vultures already arrive if the animal is not dead yet). "Venture capitalist" sounds as if nothing is wrong with it.
  • by jd2112 ( 1535857 ) on Monday May 06, 2013 @03:54PM (#43646235)
    BMC products were the bane of my existence at a previous job. Typical "Enterprise" crap. Costs a fortune, theoretically can do almost anything you want it to if you throw enough consultants and programmers at it. Out of the box it does very little.
  • three cheers for asset-stripping vulture capitalist scumbags.

    they'll get richer gutting and eventually killing off BMC, but that's a small price to pay for the death of BMC Remedy.

Get hold of portable property. -- Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations"

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