Layoffs At Now-Private Dell May Hit Over 15,000 Staffers

schwit1 writes "Curious why Michael Dell was so eager to take the company he founded private? So he could do stuff like this without attracting too much attention. According to the Channel Register, the recently LBOed company is 'starting the expected huge layoff program this week, claiming numbers will be north of 15,000.' Of course, with a private sponsor in charge of the recently public company, the only thing that matters now is maximizing cash flows in an environment of falling PC sales, a commoditisation of the server market and a perceived need to better serve enterprises with their ever-increasing mobile and cloud-focused IT requirements — things that do not bode well for Dell's EBITDA — and the result is perhaps the largest axing round in the company's history. But at least the shareholders cashed out while they could."

To make an omelette...

[The123king]

you have to break a few eggs. Dell is one of the american computing greats, and it would be a very sad day to see it taken over or file for bankruptcy. So in order to turn a company with more money leaks than a welsh allotment, you have to fire people and rearrange departments. Apple did it in 1997, Microsoft will do it in the next few years (hopefully), IBM's been doing it since IBM made computers. If Dell wants to become more than just a hardware manufacturer and OEM for Windows, they need to cut back and re-evolve. I have great expectations of Dell since it's gone private. I hope my expectations are realised...

Re:Now that it is private?

[ebno-10db]

I seem to recall the markets applauding big companies that "slashed costs" by layoffs, even though the long-term results might be disastrous.

Believe it or not, once upon a time layoffs would cause a company's stock price to fall. The markets figured, usually correctly, that layoffs meant the company was in trouble. In Dell's case I'm afraid the layoffs might be necessary, as the company is in serious trouble, but when profitable companies have needless layoffs, it's ridiculous. You can almost always make the company's finances look better in the short term with layoffs.

The best analogy I've heard (and this from a serious business analyst) is that many of these companies are like the participants in a body building contest. For those that don't know, they usually take lots of diuretics and what not for a few days before the contest to increase muscle definition. It also leaves them weak as hell. You could probably knock them over with a feather. That's the way a lot of companies are these days. Superficially they look great on the balance sheet, but they're actually quite weak when it comes to anything beyond the next quarter.

Re:Wrong

[ppanon]

Um it said in the title that Dell is now a privet company there are no stockholders to screw

Guess you missed the part where he implied deliberate mismanagement to keep the stock price down when it was still public in order to keep market capitalization lower and make the leveraged buy-out possible. I'm not saying that he's right, but if he was then his characterization that it was a failure to uphold the fiduciary duty to those shareholders seems reasonable. Finding enough evidence to prove it in a court of law as part of a (past) shareholder's lawsuit would be the tricky part.