Dell's quarterly net profit has slipped 79 percent as the company endures the struggle to see who will carve up the majority share and in which direction it will be taken.
Blackstone has given up its quest to own Dell and cleared the way for tinman Michael Dell and his private equity partner Silver Lake to go ahead with a $24.4 billion deal to acquire the PC maker.
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Might, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away. Ozymandias, Shelley
Opinion Tin-box shifter Michael Dell has found himself in the middle of a three-way proxy war for control of his company and might go out like Richard III screaming for a horse and ending up under a carpark.
It seems that the sale of Dell is becoming a bit like Shakespeare's Macbeth with Dave Johnson cast in the role of Thane of Cawdor conspiring to take the throne from King Michael "Duncan" Dell.
Michael Dell could today find out if he gets to keep hold of his company. The founder, who in February made a bid to take the firm private, has put his fate in the hands of a Dell board special committee, which is expected today to announce how it will proceed with the future of the company.
A decline in sales of PCs is affecting multinationals like Dell but that is also putting pressure on Taiwanese manufacturers to cut their costs.
Last week a large number of well known Taiwanese ODMs (original design manufacturers) reported poor results for February. The Taiwanese bourse requires listed companies to file their results monthly.
