back to article Citrix wants a buyer, fast

Citrix, under siege by activist fundster Elliott Management, is looking for a buyer. Faced with the choice of carving off its flesh pound-by-pound at Elliott's behest, the US$11.6 billion company would rather find a new owner for the whole kit-and-caboodle, a Reuters report says. The usual “people familiar with the matter” …

  1. Mark 85

    One small problem iwth selling....

    The deal comes with a curse as Elliot Management is still a stockholder... Unless a company with really deep pockets buys it and then buys back all the shares.

    I feel for all the employees are going through hell right now.

  2. dan1980

    F$*k Elliot.

    F$^k him and his cynical, selfish, greedy capitalism.

    And I don't even use Citrix - it's the principle of the matter; the way thousands of loyal employees will be shafted so that some callous, greedy prick can add still more money to a pile already too large for him to ever need.

    Because it's not enough to have enough and it's not okay to make a profit if you could make a slightly bigger profit. What matter that you will screw-over thousands in the process?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yay Corporate America, where it's illegal to not maximise profits, whatever the cost.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    If these activist investors are so good at managing other people's companies how come they haven't set up their own businesses to actually do stuff?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Because you need to be a soulless meatbag douche to succeed in finance.

      And as such are unlikely to be able to build a team around you to achieve anything on a technical level.

      See also: Martin Shkreli

    2. dan1980

      Just as you make more money owning a company than working for it, so too can you make more money buying and selling and dismantling and exploiting companies than you can can building them.

  4. Zippy's Sausage Factory
    Paris Hilton

    Microsoft

    Quite a bit of core Windows tech is actually owned by Citrix and licenced to Microsoft, so I can imagine MS getting a bit nervy about this. If Google bought Citrix then it would essentially be massive leverage for Google, and I can imagine that would a nightmare scenario for some MS shareholders (Does shy & retiring Steve Ballmer still get actively involved?)

    (Paris because there's no "I am seriously wondering what, exactly, the implications of this news might be" icon)

    1. midcapwarrior

      Re: Microsoft

      "Quite a bit of core Windows tech is actually owned by Citrix and licenced to Microsoft, so I can imagine MS getting a bit nervy about this"

      Citation or is this another internet urban myth/FUD

      1. Zippy's Sausage Factory

        Re: Microsoft

        It may no longer be the case - I know this was definitely the case for NT 4 Terminal Services Edition, whether it's still the same in RDP 8.1 I don't know, I suspect they are still using the same patents (presuming they haven't expired, of course) but I can't find any citations.

    2. Smoking Gun

      Re: Microsoft

      I'm surprised Microsoft are not looking at Citrix and salivating at the prospect of acquiring them to fill the void in their desktop virtualisation portfolio. There is a load of synergy between Microsoft and Citrix in this space, and Microsoft would also benefit from their ADC Netscaler tech.

  5. OliverJ

    Truth be told...

    I don't want to spoil the outrage about bad inve$tors and their cynical, selfish, greedy capitalism (cf. the latest AIDS pharmaceuticals outrage). But truth be told, many people who are working with Citrix products for many years (in my case since the year 1999 if memory serves) think that the company lost focus lately.

    "XenApp is dead, go XenDesktop" in one year, followed by "No no, forget about this, we are now all doing XenMobile, you know, 'work is not a place' ?" followed by this year's "What we actually meant is that it's all about the app, you know, 'software defined workplaces', btw we are all so excited about XenApp now!"

    Combine this with questionable acquisitions (AppDNA springs to mind), and problems matching old version features in new product releases, I can understand that an investor becomes nervous. Not that I think that selling off Netscaler would be a good idea. But it's too simplistic to make a scape-goat out of Elliot here.

  6. nilfs2
    Coat

    Been selling Citrix for almost a decade

    I've had a close relationship with Citrix for almost a decade selling it and implementing it, and my brother works at Citrix. We went from Citrix being our star product to zero Citrix sales the last year, my brother says it is the same everywhere else.

    I wouldn't put my money on Citrix stock, the only chance they have to survive is being bought by another company and become a value added offering for another product.

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