Reports are coming in that Michael Dell has gained control of Dell, taking it private in a $25 billion dollar buyout.  As reported on The Verge, the buyout was expected for some time and had been very close to being fully approved in July of this year.  A series of postponements delayed that decision, after which Michael Dell and Silver Lake had an opportunity to sweeten the offer with a final package that pays $13.75 a share and a $0.13 dividend.

Though the final vote hasn’t been released yet, CNBC says that it’s been told that 65 percent of votes were in favor of the buyout. “I am pleased with this outcome and am energized to continue building Dell into the industry’s leading provider of scalable, end-to-end technology solutions,” Michael Dell says in a statement following the vote.

The drama has played out over the summer notably with the objections, counteroffers, and very public positioning of billionaire investor Carl Icahn against the buyout.  Icahn had also been involved in his own bid to control the company, an effort he must now abandon.  In his most recent statements, Icahn indicated that he felt the final buyout proposal was too low, but the stage is set nonetheless.

No pressure

The buyout means that Dell will be able to operate independent of the pressure of Wall St. while it attempts to execute a turnaround in the face of a struggling and dwindling PC market.  In order to make this pivot, this newly gained ability to be out of the public eye means the company is aiming for rapid development and new solutions as part of their strategic plan.

Dell has been on a path of bolstering their enterprise services with everything from cloud products, security services, the acquisition of Quest Software, and more.  There are many opinions on what Dell will or should do in the market, but the focus on enterprise services is in line with some of the biggest strategic trends in the industry, it’s just a matter of how quickly they get there.