Although I dont claim to have the business acumen or auction expertise of say dmiller, here is how I see it:
The hold up in announcing a completed deal is the consortium process not that auction or price determination. In the Nortel auction the consortiums were hastily put together in just hours or a couple of days after the price went much higher than anticipated. If I remember correctly I think the bidders actually had to get permission from the trustee to go that route. This speed was dictated by the bankruptcy process and I am sure the entities would have liked to have more time. With Interdigital, there are not the same time pressures and the transaction is much more complicated. Within the consortium there has to be agreements determining who owns which patents and who will be a paid up license. Also, what do you do with the on-going entity? The engineers and their roadmap is very valuable imo and that might be a sticking point. Also, if QCOM is in a consortium, what happens to their current licensees that are in their consortium vs those that are not? As I said, this is very complicated and all this has to be agreed upon before an announcement can be made, even if the price had been agreed upon as a whole, 2 weeks ago. Comments?
Dclarke
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