United Tech Bids $2.6B for Diebold 129
zhang1983 writes "United Technologies, parent company of jet engine-maker Pratt & Whitney, Otis elevator and Sikorsky Aircraft, said it made the unsolicited offer to Diebold for $2.63 billion on Friday after trying to negotiate a deal for two years.
United Technologies said the company announced the offer Sunday night because executives believe their offer is "so compelling we thought shareholders should know about it.""
Shady elections are one thing... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not saying anyone did, but an insider would be up 65% plus on the buyout bid news this morning...
Re:It's probably not about Premier Elections Syste (Score:3, Interesting)
Hostile Takeover (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually read about this in my local paper Hartford Courant [courant.com] this morning. I don't think the CNN article really does a good job indicating the "hostile" in this hostile takeover. Note the part where Laurer directed UTC not to have further contact with board members.
My impression is that UTC has been getting more heavily into security over the last several years and they are probably more interested the ATM/check machine aspect of Diebold, in spite of Diebold's entanglements with voting machines.
Re:In unrelated news... (Score:-1, Interesting)
M.I.C. + voting machine ownership = fascist state (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shady elections are one thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
How so? The Diebold electronic-voting scandal has been with us for about a decode now, and I don't seem to have read of any indictments. Even Wally O'Dell's infamous promise in writing to deliver Ohio to the Republican got no obvious attention from the legal system. There don't seem to be much more than a few small-scale, local investigations so far, and the Justice Dept seems supremely uninterested in the topic.
I'd bet (and a lot of investors will bet) that they'll continue to get away with it for a very long time. After all, the people in a position to investigate them are working for politicians, many of whom were elected with the help of Diebold equipment. And there are preliminary reports that Diebold has branched out to helping Democrats in the current primaries.
Maybe the investigators are just managing to keep a really low profile. But a better bet would be that they aren't doing much serious investigating at all.