Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM), the struggling smart-phone developer, announced yesterday that shareholders approved the company's transaction with Elevation Partners.The deal calls for Palm to receive a $325 million investment from Elevation Partners and borrow up to $400 million in debt financing. The cash proceeds will be used to pay a fat $9 dividend to shareholders. Elevation will gain board seats as partners Fred Anderson, Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) former chief financial officer, and Roger McNamee, the long-time tech investor, will join the board. On their way out are directors Eric Benhamou and Scott Mercer.
Palm will also get Jonathan Rubinstein, the former head of Apple's iPod business, to become the new executive board chairman.
Palm pulled its new product initiative, Foleo, last week. Now it appears the device maker will try to outdo Apple by bringing Anderson and Rubinstein on board. However, the major ingredient that is still missing is that Apple has Jobs and Palm does not. Right now, Palm is a show-me stock -- show me the results before I jump into these shares.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-13-2007 @ 1:21PM
george scandalis said...
The larger question for me is why would they jump onboard a sinking ship, especially a ship with no money, no visionary leading the way and a market share that is dangerously close to Apple's after only 74 days in the smartphone market?
PalmSource (now a subsidiary of ACCESS). (1.6% Market Share), Mac OS X from Apple, Inc. (1.3% Market Share)
Market Share data from Canalys report "Worldwide smart mobile device market, Canalys Q2 2007