back to article SUSE to flip back into private ownership after just two-and-a-bit years

Linux-loving software house SUSE is to quit the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and become a private company again, just two years after it listed in 2021. On Wednesday the developer announced that its majority shareholder, an entity called Marcel LUX III SARL, intends to take it private by delisting it from the Frankfurt Stock …

  1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

    So, a Swiss investment bank wants to take SUSE off of public scrutiny to do a deal with some unnamed entity hosted in Luxembourg.

    The fact that it is in Luxembourg practically implies it is some entity belonging to an international conglomerate. Money meets more money.

    I hope this means that the people working on SUSE are safe, but once again, this deal has nothing to do with improving SUSE and everything to do with managing investor interests.

    And backroom deals are best done far from public scrutiny.

    You decide if that is a good thing or not.

    1. Zippy´s Sausage Factory
      Alert

      Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

      That's more or less what I was thinking.

      The "unlisted Luxembourg entity" could be anyone.

      "Microsoft SUSE Linux"? Ugh, I'm worried now.

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

        Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

      2. jpennycook
        Linux

        Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

        Microsoft were already involved back in 2010/2011 - they formed a consortium called CPTN to acquire Novell's (who owned SUSE at the time) patents.

        > As of December 2010, CPTN's members are believed to be Microsoft, Apple Inc., Oracle and EMC Corporation.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPTN_Holdings

    2. TVU

      Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

      "You decide if that is a good thing or not"

      That is a valid point to make but given Red Hat's recent controversial policy decisions and SUSE's membership of the Open Enterprise Linux Association, SUSE potentially has a bright future ahead.

    3. anothercynic Silver badge

      Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

      Not Swiss. Not an investment bank. I suggest you re-read the article.

    4. James Anderson

      Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

      Er.... it's a Swedish private equity fund doing the puchase.

      The "merger" is probably just a device to ease the delisting process. Changing a company to private ownership can be quite complex, it's much simpler to pretend it was taken over by another company.

      Best case scenario is that the plan to face off Red Hat would be considered too risky for a listed company which has a duty to not engage in strategies the could bust the company.

      1. Mockup1974

        Re: "merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity"

        My understanding is that EQT is also the seller (majority shareholder). So they're just taking it private without a real change of ownership.

  2. Hans 1
    Linux

    Milking penguins

    This sure does not bode well, RedHat and Suse, two harakiris in a quarter.

  3. gariac

    I have to say it hasn't been pleasant with OpenSuse lately. Yast seems to be replaced or supplemented with opi.

    I have a fresh SSD and had planed on going Ubuntu. However maybe I should go Debian given the complaints about Ubuntu.

    1. Smirnov

      >> I have to say it hasn't been pleasant with OpenSuse lately. Yast seems to be replaced or supplemented with opi.

      How so? YaST is a system management tool doing all kinds of stuff (including being an UX front-end for zypper), while opi is apackage installer for software on OBS.

      What's missing is YaST integration of opi, but they're working on that.

      >> I have a fresh SSD and had planed on going Ubuntu. However maybe I should go Debian given the complaints about Ubuntu.

      Good luck with that. Also considering that Ubuntu is known as "Windows amongst Linuxes" for a reason, and neither distro doesn't even have anything like YaST to begin with.

    2. steelpillow Silver badge

      I'd go Devuan if I were you: Debian, but fixable if anything even remotely imaginable to be linked with init (and a few other things for luck) goes TITSUP (TM).

  4. jake Silver badge

    It sounds like ...

    ... they will be under even tighter control of the beancounters.

    Sad, that.

    1. ragnar

      Re: It sounds like ...

      This is a pretty mistaken comment. De-listing means the company has much more freedom to be run without being under the thumb of the beancounters and a stock market focused on short term gains only

      1. jake Silver badge

        Re: It sounds like ...

        To quote the article:

        "On Wednesday the developer announced that its majority shareholder, an entity called Marcel LUX III SARL, intends to take it private by delisting it from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and merging it with an unlisted Luxembourg entity."

        "Marcel is an entity controlled by EQT Private Equity, a Swedish investment firm"

        Sounds like all bean counters, with no technical or other oversight.

      2. Fred Goldstein

        Re: It sounds like ...

        De-listing and being fully controlled by a private equity firm is the opposite of being a private company in the normal sense. Private Equity is the latest euphemism for what used to be called leveraged buyout firms (LBOs). But leverage, as a euphemism for debt, became too well known, so now they call it PE. But it's really a small amount of equity and a lot of debt coming from places like sovereign wealth funds.

        PE is where companies go to die. PE operators are financial engineers who by definition don't give a flying fleak about the companies they buy. They swoop in when the stock is low. Once in control, they pay themselves a huge fee (special dividend), sapping the company of any cash it might have left. They lay off huge amounts of the staff, and hope that revenue from old customers continues for a while even though there is little new work going on. The PE operators make sure to pay themselves huge consulting fees too out of the company coffers. Then they sell any saleable assets and shut the company's doors if nobody steps up to purchase it.

        That's how modern capitalism works. Adam Smith would be aghast.

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