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About Hans Bayer

By Pamela Jones et al.

Groklaw's reporters who attended the SCO bankruptcy hearing on the 27th reported that SCO portrayed Hans Bayer as not an officer of the company and not authorized to speak for SCO about the unXis deal. As a result, some emails by Bayer about the proposed sale to unXis were stricken from the record. I'll show you in a minute why SCO was so eager to have the emails stricken. They are very damaging. CEO Darl McBride said he'd even reprimanded Bayer for some emails he was not authorized to send. At one point, Cravath attorney David Marriott, representing IBM, pulled out his Blackberry and showed McBride the SCO website, listing Bayer as VP. But SCO's portrayal was that the web site was mistaken. When Steve Norris later testified, however, when he was asked who was the lead negotiator for SCO in the unXis deal, he said it was Hans Bayer. Norris had not been in the courtroom during McBride's testimony.

Who was correct? You will find Hans Bayer listed as an officer of SCO Group in the Walker Research Corporate Directory 2007. Right here [PDF], on page 25, where he's listed as a VP. That matches the web site. Here's a SCO press release, which includes a quotation from Hans Bayer, when SCO announced a deal with Sberbank in Russia, as well as a quote from Darl McBride, which tells me they both had to sign off on the press release:

"We are pleased that one of the largest banks in the world has decided to deploy SCO Open Server Release 6 to their branch offices. The increased performance that Open Server 6 brings together with its high compatibility has made this the best choice for modernizing the existing IT branch infrastructure," said Hans Bayer, vice president, worldwide sales for The SCO Group.

So, he wasn't just the head of the German subsidiary. He was also VP of Worldwide Sales for SCO Group. "We are pleased," he said, speaking for SCO.

Full post as published by Groklaw on July 29, 2009 (boomark / email).