My surprise was that prior to this there was no talk at all (that I saw) of
Corel increasing it's support for MS initiatives (namely .NET). And it
matters not if it's voting or non-voting stock, it probably plays in MS
favor that it's not voting stock, MS probably saved thousands of investors
lots of money. If they have an initiative/agenda that they would like to
see corel follow, i doubt that it will be too difficult for them to make the
circuit of voting members and get thier support.
I'm not sure why none of the other linux companies were there to bail out or
assist corel, and MS's reason's surely were not humanitarian, I guess they
saw that they had more to gain business wise than anyone else.
Given the fact that MS had a 10% stake in Inprise/Borland, makes ya wonder
borland called off the merger.
Now instead of improving thier linux line, they'll have to divert their
resources to the windows line, and MS get's to work with a company who has
experience in porting to linux, or even worse, delaying the porting of
programs to linux.
Taken from the corel website:
http://www3.corel.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?GXHC_gx_sessio
n_id_Fut%20ureTenseContentServer=212dce09b98d010d&pagename=Corel/PressReleas
e/Details&id=CC100K16H9C
"While neither Microsoft nor any of its affiliates are entitled to convert
the preferred shares, they will be saleable to, and convertible by other
parties, into an aggregate of 24 million common shares of Corel. Based on
the number of shares currently outstanding, the common shares issuable upon
conversion of the preferred shares would represent approximately 24.6 per
cent of the outstanding Corel common shares after the conversion. The
preferred shares do not carry any preferential dividends over the common
shares. "
(text/plain)