Novell Inc was not the only game in town in AT&T Co’s efforts to sell off Unix System Laboratories Inc. At least one other investment group was raring to go. In fact they expected to meet with Unix Labs chairman Bob Kavner and lay their money on the table during the week before Christmas, only to be terminally upstaged by the Novell announcement. Word on the street is taht they were ready to plunk down $426m, a figure Kavner pulled from the air at the end of a previous meeting at which they had offered $385m. This group – and there were some sterling institutions said to be among the participants – would have trimmed Unix Labs down to its core operating system, dumped the loss-making language sector, sold off the $5m-a-year Tuxedo line that some insiders consider a crown jewel, and cut back on the ES/MP secure multiprocessor developments that everybody wanted and no-one is buying. Along with the products would have gone a lot more of the people than Unix Labs cut loose just before it got bought. It will be interesting to see whether or not Novell comes to any of the same business decisions once it takes the firm over.
