Tuesday, June 27, 2006

CDC Software weirdness

Earlier this month, Made2Manage and Onyx Software announced their agreement for Onyx to be acquired by M2M. Now, CDC Software, a Chinese software company based on Hong Kong is making a third offer to acquire Onyx, after having been rejected twice before by Onyx.

Josh Greenberg writes in Datamation about CDC's difficult-to-fathom behavior:
Onyx’s weird trip started last December, when it received an unsolicited bid from CDC, a Chinese company that previously had bought up two minor companies, CRM vendor Pivotal Software and ERP vendor Ross Systems.

According to filings by Onyx, CDC embarked on a strategy of mixed messages and seemingly bizarre behavior, setting up meetings with Onyx executives and then putting out press releases claiming that Onyx was avoiding CDC. After a few weeks of this kind of behavior, CDC retracted its bid, only to reinstate it in March.

Even at this writing, with the M2M deal looking like it will gain widespread shareholder acceptance, CDC continues its pursuit of a very unwilling Onyx, claiming publicly that the fees Onyx would have to pay to retreat from the M2M deal were "unusually high" and offering to fight the fees in court. Meanwhile, CDC has written to the SEC claiming that Onyx failed to consider other legitimate offers. And so the saga continues.
CRM News has more on the CDC/Onyx drama.

Related posts
Onyx CRM to be acquired by Made2Manage

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