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A Question About the Novell-Microsoft Deal

By Pamela Jones et al.

I've been thinking about something for a few days now. It's about the latest Novell-Microsoft deal that was announced on August 20, where Microsoft agreed to buy another $100 million worth of vouchers from Novell. I was wondering: how come two public companies can make a deal that seems to me to be material and yet keep pieces of the deal secret?

We never did get all the details about the original deal from November of 2006. And now there's this new one, which so far is only described in broad strokes. I wonder if we will be kept in the dark about some of its terms too? Isn't there supposed to be a filing within 10 days or so? How is the public to know whether to invest in either company, if we don't know what the deal's terms are with specificity? Are investors supposed to just guess?

Full post as published by Groklaw on September 04, 2008 (boomark / email).