I did correctly predict that Cisco would reach deeper into its pocketbook and pull out more money to pay for TANDBERG, which they most certainly did.
It is a huge embarrassment for Cisco to have gotten only 9% of shares in its original offer, showing that the brand does not offer the kind of cachet they used to.
To me, it would have been a sign of Cisco’s strategic maturity if it had walked away from a deal it really did consider to be too rich. Nortel did just that with its acquisition of Selsius Systems (which Cisco paid nearly 2 x more for) and IBM only recently did the same with its failed acquisition of Sun Microsystems which was co-opted by Oracle. Oracle is still waiting for European anti-trust approval.
