Corel shareholders earlier this week approved a stock consolidation that was part of the going-private deal with Corel Holdings LP, a limited partnership controlled by major shareholder Vector Capital.
Stakeholders who were not part of Corel Holdings and its affiliates will receive US$4 in cash for each pre-consolidation share held, the company said in a statement.
Shares of Corel, maker of popular software products such as PaintShop Pro and WordPerfect, have now been delisted from the Nasdaq and the Toronto Stock Exchange. The stock was priced at $3.33 on the TSX at its last trade on Jan. 27.
This is the second time Vector Capital has taken Corel private. Vector – a San Francisco-based private equity firm that owned about 68.3 per cent of Corel’s shares before this latest privatization – first bought out Corel in 2003, and in 2006 the software company ventured back into the public markets, with its shares debuting at US$16 at the time.
Vector attempted to buy Corel again in March 2008, offering $11 in a bid criticized by some analysts at the time as being too low, but that deal fell through in August of that year.
Corel continued to seek buyers to recapitalize itself, and announced shortly after the collapse of the Vector bid that it had identified a third-party buyer. However, the buyout talks sputtered a few months later, and Vector announced another bid in 2009, this time for only US$3.50.
The private equity firm then sweetened its bid to $4 in November.
