There’s a new twist in the BroadQualm saga this afternoon as Qualcomm has said it won’t renominate Paul Jacobs, the former executive chairman of the company, after he notified the board that he decided to explore the possibility of making a proposal to acquire Qualcomm.
The last time we saw such a huge exploration to acquire a company was circa 2013, when Dell initiated a leveraged buyout to take the company private in a deal worth $24.4 billion. This would be of a dramatically larger scale, and there’s a report by the Financial Times that Jacobs approached Softbank as a potential partner in the buyout. Jacobs is the son of Irwin Jacobs, who founded Qualcomm, and rose to run the company as CEO from 2005 to 2014. Successfully completing a buyout of this scale would, as a result, end up keeping the company that his father founded in 1985 in the family.
“I am glad the board is willing to evaluate such a proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties to shareholders,” Jacobs said in a statement. “It is unfortunate and disappointing they are attempting to remove me from the board at this time.”
All this comes following Broadcom’s decision to drop its plans to try to complete a hostile takeover of Qualcomm, which would consolidate two of the largest semiconductor companies in the world into a single unit. Qualcomm said the board of directors would instead consist of just 10 members.
“Following the withdrawal of Broadcom’s takeover proposal, Qualcomm is focused on executing its business plan and maximizing value for shareholders as an independent company,” the company said in a statement. “There can be no assurance that Dr. Jacobs can or will make a proposal, but, if he does, the Board will of course evaluate it consistent with its fiduciary duties to shareholders.”
Broadcom dropped its attempts after the Trump administration decided to block the deal altogether. The BroadQualm deal fell into purgatory following an investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, and then eventually led to the administration putting a stop to the deal — and potentially any of that scale — while Broadcom was still based in Singapore. Broadcom had intended to move to the United States, but the timing was such that Qualcomm would end up avoiding Broadcom’s attempts at a hostile takeover.
BroadQualm has been filled with a number of twists and turns, coming to a chaotic head this week with the end of the deal. Qualcomm removed Jacobs from his role as executive chairman and installed an independent director, and then delayed the shareholder meeting that would give Broadcom an opportunity to pick up the votes to take over control of part of Qualcomm’s board of directors. The administration then handed down its judgment, and Qualcomm pushed up its shareholder meeting as a result to ten days following the decision.
“There are real opportunities to accelerate Qualcomm’s innovation success and strengthen its position in the global marketplace,” Jacobs said in the statement. “These opportunities are challenging as a standalone public company, and there are clear merits to exploring a path to take the company private in order to maximize the company’s long-term performance, deliver superior value to all stockholders, and bolster a critical contributor to American technology.”
It’s not clear if Jacobs would be able to piece together the partnerships necessary to complete a buyout of this scale. But it’s easy to read between the lines of Qualcomm’s statement — which, as always, has to say it will fulfill its fiduciary duty to its shareholders. The former CEO and executive chairman has quietly been a curious figure to this whole process, and it looks like the BroadQualm saga is nowhere near done.
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