Cisco Grits Teeth, Ups Tandberg Bid

Cisco is finding that sometimes acquisitions aren’t quite as easy to do as showing the money. This morning it upped its bid for Tandberg from $3 billion to roughly $3.4 billion.

Some holders of sizeable chunks of Tandberg stock had objected to the Cisco offer as inadequate. That initial offer was 153.5 Norwegian Kroner versus the 170 Kroner today, or a jump of about 10.7 percent. So where does that leave the deal? Here’s what Cisco had to say this morning:

Shareholders representing in aggregate more than 30% of the outstanding shares, including TANDBERG’S largest shareholders Folketrygdfondet and OppenheimerFunds, have pre-accepted this offer based on this new price. These shares combined with the previously announced shareholder acceptances bring the total to in excess of 40% of the outstanding shares committed to the transaction.Cisco believes that this revised offer remains consistent with the principles of prudence and financial fairness. If Cisco does not achieve the desired level of acceptances, the company will withdraw the offer and evaluate alternative ways to expand our activities in the video communications market.

The thing is, there was a group of 21 stockholders holding 24 percent of the shares and Cisco needs a vote from 90 percent of the shareholders for the deal to happen. Right now, Cisco says that 40 percent of the holders of outstanding shares have bought in, so that leaves a good many still to be heard from.

<em>Image via stock.xchng user <a href=”http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1058130″>mzacha </a>, site standard license.</em>