On the Wall Street Journal , Heidi Moore asks about the dead deal.
Frankly, the reason I think the 3Com-Huawei-Bain deal died is because Huawei didn’t want to sit in a US congressional hearing and have their ownership, strategy or money questioned. That’s why the deal fell apart.
The public or worse ‘foreign’ review process made them very uncomfortable. They thought this was a contract and a trivial regulatory review and weren’t prepared to play the Beltway cards. I’m sure that they didn’t feel that they deserved the scrutiny or attention and were willing to walk to avoid the humiliation. No doubt they really don’t understand how this kind of ‘review’ process fits in the scheme of buying and selling.
Fear of failure after protracted public embarrassment (remember Cnooc's failed acquisition of Unocal) is something the Chinese executives at the top of Huawei cannot tolerate. In this case it was easier to walk than to hang in there.
