The raiding investor ????

To the AC who complains about raiding investors - normally I'd agree with you but Steel Partners can hardly be called raiders in this case. Steel first invested in Adaptec in around the time Sundi became CEO, several years ago.

At that time, Adaptec might have been a basket case but it was posting revenues in the region of $120M per quarter.

When Steel invested in Adaptec many insiders hoped that it was the start of a turn around. Instead, Steel had an extended fight to get representation on the Adaptec board and Adaptec senior management has always done the opposite of what Steel wanted. This has continued right up to the current crisis as evidenced by the Adaptec proposals to effectively remove the board positions occupied by Steel.

During the time that Steel have been major investors in Adaptec they have watched Sundi take the quarterly revenue from that $120M (which was considered disappointing at the time) all the way down to $18M. The head count has gone from about 2000 to 350. It doesn't take much knowledge of downsizing to know that the senior management and bean counters are safe and that the axe falls on those who actually do and produce things. I.e. Adaptec don't have any major R&D capabilities any more.

I don't know anyone who has come across Sundi who doesn't think at best that he's out of his depth. Most just consider him to be an expensive idiot. It does take a special genius to under perform the sector by 100%.

When the news came out that Steel had the requisite proxy votes the news was greeted with cheers by the vast majority of former Adaptec insiders.

Over several years Steel have invested a considerable amount of money and seen the value of the inevestment p****d against the wall by Sundi, Mark Lowe et al. If my pension included shares locked in such a poor performing company I'd become an activist investor, too.

Sadly, the time to realise value from Adaptec was some 5 years ago. What might be realised now may be enough for the likes of Steel to break even, but I'd doubt it. Sundi's reign at Adaptec has been like Gordon Brown's reign here - an incompetent disaster.