Merry Christmas...you're...

[thrown_hammer]

Uncertain? The company I work for made an announcement today they have been purchased by a private equity firm.

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061218/biomet_purchase.html?.v=12

We have a big meeting tomorrow to explain everything. Can't help but feel a little uneasy... Wish us luck.

[Jim Richards]

Ouray, CO in your future?

[legion]

This could be very good or very bad. You will have to see.

I work for a privately held company. When we lost a boatload of money a few years ago, the company restructered to cut costs and increase revenues for the long term. There were no layoffs to meet next quarters numbers. Some facilities did close, but reductions were met by people who refused to move to keep their jobs (everyone was offered their job at a different facility).

I hope this move is to help insulate your company from quick (and often devastating) decisions the stock markets often demand.

On the other hand, the buyers could be looking for a quick buck. They could dismantle the company and sell off its patents or license its manufacturing whle shutting down operations. They might want to flip it into a steady revenue stream and kill off R&D and reduce manufacturing to minimal staff.

I wish you the best.

[gaijindabe]

Good ol' Eron coming back to haunt the US economy. Who wants to be a public company subject to ridiculous Sarbanes-Oxley rules when you can go private?

[thrown_hammer]

We'll see. Of course the rumours are flying. I am holding judgement until I have some facts. I've been here 15 years so I am a little slow to dive out of the plane.

[azasadny]

Shawn,

Good luck! Things may work out OK for you, I'm sure hoping they do...

[JeremyD]

I'm happy to work for a private company with deep pockets -

[Don Plumley]

Private Equity 101:

Acquire a business with reasonable free cash flow. Load it with debt to fund the acquisition. This requires management to run the business very, very efficiently. In many ways, this is a good thing. Freed of short term market pressures, they can take earnings hits that would not fly in the next 10Q. But they may also need to sell off parts of the business, either divisions or product lines, to pay down debt and improve the balance sheet.

In the boardroom, private equity owners are ruthless, and if financial performance is not being met, management teams are tossed. Their objective is to sell the business in single-digit years (shorter the better) for more than they paid for it.

For the average individual at a company owned by a private equity firm, life goes on. Sometimes large investments are made in improving the company. Most of the time spending goes on a very short leash to meet the debt cash flow requirements.

So long as your company is not broken up into a bunch of bits, life is probably fine for you. Your best defense is to be important enough to a core technology that you are given appropriate retention and change of control compensation/contracts.

[Tim Hancock]

Shawn, the company I worked 15 yrs for was unexpectedly sold 2 yrs ago and while scary it has worked out fine thus far for 2/3 of us that kept our jobs. We lost a few benefits, but the change of owners has been refreshing.

Good luck!

[Rick Lee]

We just got a new CEO and his first order of business was to call in all the vp's and managers and ask each of them the old "What do you do for this company?". Now they're tightening our guidelines and raising our prices so fast and furious that it will force a lot of folks (we're all 100% commission) to jump ship.

[slodave]

Time for another BBQ. That sucks Shawn. I hope things work out. Moving to Cali, then moving back home and 6 months later you're situation is up in the air again, ouch!

My time is up at the end of year. I have to find work soon, as I have no savings to live off of. Weeeeeeeee.

Dave

[Joeaksa]

Originally posted by JeremyD
I'm happy to work for a private company with deep pockets -

I was for many years in the same boat, owner worth almost a billion. 18 months ago he announced that he was retiring and selling everything and within months we were out.

Always good to have a "Plan B" in your backpocket.

[thrown_hammer]

I am not too worried. I live and work in the Orthopedic capitol of the world. It sounds like from preliminary rumblings the group that purchased us is into long term ownership, not corporate raiding. Our founder and CEO abruptly “retired” earlier this year. He is one of the top investors involved, so I find it hard to believe he would come back into the picture just to hack up the company. Biomet is his baby. Now he may come back to hack up certain individuals…. Or maybe not. Time will tell. The whole thing won't be tied up until October of next year.

[Rot 911]

Damn there sure are a lot of us going through uncertainty/loss of jobs this Christmas. What did we do to piss off Baby Jesus?

[thrown_hammer]

Perhaps Baby Jesus wants to see what we are made of?

[Slider79SC]

Well when PeopleSoft's founder came back when they purchased us he swore up and down that he was in it long term and that it was his baby... blah blah blah...

One year later Oracle came in and ran us over and he made a $hit pot of money from it.....

[Zeke]

Originally posted by slodave
Time for another BBQ. That sucks Shawn. I hope things work out. Moving to Cali, then moving back home and 6 months later you're situation is up in the air again, ouch!

......

Dave

I know, that sucks. That was a real knee jerk (no pun, you make prosthetics, right?) on the company's part. Probably a crippling one, too. Best of luck, but it might be time to move on.

[MisterB]

I know the feeling. I am going thru the same except I know my employment will end in April and struggling on whether or not to sell the P car. Good Luck and hopefully something good happens one way or another. Merry Xmas...............

[thrown_hammer]

Originally posted by milt
I know, that sucks. That was a real knee jerk (no pun, you make prosthetics, right?) on the company's part. Probably a crippling one, too. Best of luck, but it might be time to move on.

Close. We make joint replacements. One good thing is all my stock options become mature when the ink dries and I get a decent sized check in the mail. They are going to replace the stock option program with some other form since the stock option program here was a big part of your salary and if that dissappears good people start migrating across town. I have my yearly review sometime this week, we'll see how that goes and go from there. I will probably hang in there and see it thru. I have a feeling the master plan is to go public again in five to ten years.

[widebody911]

Well, it was an interesting day for me on the job front! They decided to open a perm req for the role which I have been performing for the past 8 years, so I applied and interviewed. This was back in mid-October. Turns out I wasn't qualified for my own job! For some reason, they've decided to take a highly technical position and change it to a project management position. I don't know Sig Sigma from Seven-of-Nine. So who's going to do the technical stuff? Not the Indians - I've been doing the work on their servers! The kicker was, my boss didn't have the cojones to actually tell me I didn't get the position. My spider sense told me that I wouldn't get it, but I think it's my mgr's job to say "Hey Thom, sorry, but we've chosen someone else, and your services will no longer be needed as of ______" I wonder - would my badge just stop working on a certain date?

About 2 hours later, I accepted a position with another company! The pay is roughly the same, considering I'm switching from 1099 to W2, but this gig offers some challenges that were lacking in the last gig. At least I get out from under the 7-1/2% self-employment tax! Since job A had left me twisting in the wind, I did what any good liberal would do and started knocking on doors (so to speak).

The downside is, I probably won't have as much time to spread my liberal wisdom during the work day...