min-myinnersoul

You have a billion dollars burning a hole in your pocket ( Gils , Zeno , and a few others have that problem !). Take your pick. What would you buy ? 800 patents, dating back to the early days of the Internet. Or a red hot new internet rage that everybody is talking about but which has no revenues. Or boring old Yellow Pages. What would you take ? These are three transactions that actually happened in the last couple of weeks for about $1 bn.  Microsoft bought the 800 patents from AOL for $1.1 bn. The patent world has become completely crazy for tech companies in the last few years. Everybody is suing everybody else for patent infringement. Some 800 plus patents are given simply for what goes into a mobile phone. Its impossible these days to launch anything without infringing on somebody's patent.The US patent office has gone crazy as I wrote about here - Patents have now become innovation stifling rather than innovation building. Anyway Microsoft believes its better to pay $1.1 bn...

On a clear day, you won’t see General Motors any more. At least the GM of yore. GM is being cut apart and fed to any meat eater in the vicinity. One titbit, Hummer , is going to an unexpected place. Hummer, for the auto uninitiated, is a gas guzzling Sport Utility Vehicle, particularly loved by the Americans. It was very popular, but is no longer so – its global sales declined by 62% in Q1. A few days back it was announced that Hummer would be acquired by Sichuan Tengzhong , a Chinese company based in Chengdu. This is not the most obvious of deals – lets put it that way. Why is an unknown Chinese company doing this acquisition ? The deal looks shaky for a number of reasons. Firstly Sichuan Tengzhong makes highway and bridge structural components, construction machinery , energy equipment and yes – trucks carrying cement mixers. What has this got to do with American SUVs ? Where is the business fit ? Secondly, Hummer is a gas guzzler on a steep decline. What will Tengzhong do with it. ...