Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) must really love Tandberg. Up to the finish line of a painfully desperate acquisition process, Cisco is bending over backward in public to close the deal -- even when it doesn't really have to.
As the last, final, not-going-there-again extended deadline for Cisco's $3.4 billion cash offer expired last night, Cisco sent out a notice that it held 89% of Tandberg's shares and would waive the 90% holding requirement. As I understand it, Tandberg would then remain a separate company under Norwegian law until Cisco could actually scrape together those last few shares and trigger an automatic sale of the remaining unsold shares. It's a hassle, and it makes Cisco look part desperate and part silly, but that didn't stop management from taking that step.
And then the next morning, Cisco reported that after accounting for its 2% of Tandberg's shares, which it bought on the open market in November, it actually controlled 91% of Tandberg. No sweat, we got this in the bag, forget about that waiver. Oh, and the U.S. Department of Justice is moving ahead with the regulatory process -- fully expected stuff that shouldn't scare anybody, but still a reminder that the deal is by no means signed, sealed, and delivered yet.
Given that Cisco and Tandberg together hold a serious majority of the high-quality teleconferencing market known as Telepresence, I wouldn't bet my house on the outcome until Susan Boyle sings the national anthem of Norway. Though Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HPQ) (which is partnered with Tandberg), Teliris, Polycom (NASDAQ:PLCM), and others have Telepresence products on the market, their market shares are vanishingly small. It's kind of like letting Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) buy Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) for a crushing dominance of the online search market.
On the other hand, Telepresence may be a narrow enough market to let the deal slip by unnoticed. We've seen that happen before, after all.
Cisco says that every high-def TV in America could become a Telepresence installation within two years as the technology moves into the consumer segment. Does that make Tandberg worth the trouble? Discuss in the comments below, dear Fools.
