Michael Dell explains his US$67 billion EMC bet

Re/code interviewed Michael Dell in Michael Dell Explains His $67 Billion Bet on EMC. He talks about his plan to pull off the biggest technology merger in history, one that will create a business with an annual turnover of US$80 billion.

The story leads with the point made here last week: big technology mergers rarely succeed. There’s little here to convince me that Dell has something special that the earlier companies attempting large takeovers didn’t have.

And as the story points out, Dell is moving in the opposite direction to HP which is separating its PC business from its enterprise computing operation. HP has more experience than any other company with large scale technology take-overs, none of them were a resounding success. If HP couldn’t get it right by the third try (and a huge takeover) then it’s unlikely Dell can.

If Dell was still a public company, shareholders would be furious at this move. Presumably Michael Dell took the business private so he could make a big play without worrying about keeping investors happy. But I can’t help thinking that at bottom this deal, like so many tech industry mega-mergers, it more about egos than unlocking business value.