Amit Chowdhry | August 29, 2008 | 558 Views | 1 Comment
Categorized under Napster, UBS, UBS Investment Bank, Union Bank of Switzerland
Napster, Inc. (NASDAQ:NAPS) has hired UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) to help them with their proxy battle and to solicit an acquisition. Napster is a small competitor of iTunes and Amazon.com and was the talk of the tech town in the late 90’s/early 2000’s.
There are three shareholders that are looking to have the current Board of Napster ousted. Perry H. Rod, Thomas Sailors, and Kavan P. Singh are the three shareholders that are having a proxy battle with the current Board. Napster’s annual shareholder meeting is taking place on September 18. The Board is seeking to have Richard J. Boyko, Philip J. Holthouse and Robert Rodin re-elected.
The letter to shareholders is available after the jump.
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Amit Chowdhry | August 30, 2007 | 326 Views | Add a Comment
Categorized under Longworth Venture Partners, Microsoft Corporation, Oak Investment Partners, Parlano, UBS, Union Bank of Switzerland
Today Microsoft made an announcement that they would be acquiring Parlano. Parlano is a Chicago, Ill. based company that developed software called MindAlign, an enterprise group chat messaging system. Microsoft is expecting to implement Parlano software as a part of Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator. Microsoft Office Communicator is an internal messaging system that works similar to Windows Live Messenger, commonly used among major corporations.
“Parlano has been successful in meeting the rigorous communications needs of companies in financial services and other vertical markets,” stated Gurdeep Singh Pall, the corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. “Parlano’s expertise and technology, added to Microsoft’s unified communications offering, will deliver customers the most complete presence, instant messaging and group chat solution on the market.”
Financial terms for the acquisition were not disclosed. Parlano is a spin-off from UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) and has 50 employees. Parlano’s investors include Longworth Venture Partners and Oak Investment Partners.
“Parlano has helped many organizations enhance operations, improve service delivery and increase sales through more effective ongoing group communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing,” stated Nick Fera, the chairman and CEO of Parlano. “The resulting competitive advantage will be further enhanced as we bring Parlano technology together with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator.”
