Dell Said It Will Keep All Compellent’s Staff

Following the official announcement of the acquisition of Compellent by Dell, we wrote an analysis including these sentences: "Following Dell’s acquisition, there are two big losers, EMC and Pillar, one of the last storage firm on the market that has the portfolio to fill Dell’s missing offering. The other ones will be lot of Compellent’s employees, totaling 387 at the end of 2009 and around 490 now, that will be progressively fired, those in administration, marketing and sales, as well as some main executives. The only ones that Dell will keep are in R&D team, about 111 people."

In a conference call on December 13, Dell and Compellent say the contrary.

Phil Soran, president, CEO and chairman of Compellent, declared:" Well, let’s talk just for a minute here about what it means to our employees. First of all, Dell is going to offer everyone at Compellent a job before the close of the acquisition. In fact, we’re going to continue hiring. In fact, today, after I get off this conference call, I’m going to a new hire class, we’ll have lunch with our new hires that started their first day of work today at Compellent. Secondly, Dell plans to keep Compellent’s existing operations in Eden Prairie and grow it. And while Dell will invest in growing the team in the twin cities, we’ll also expand our local presence worldwide."  

He added:" We made offer letters last Friday to people so that’s (happening). So the 490 people, it will not involve them moving. They’re going to get offer letters to – you know to basically do the same role they did the day before and to stay in the same location they’re at."

According to Brad Anderson, senior VP of Dell’s enterprise product group, "We have reached employment agreements with all the top leadership teams of Compellent so we’re really excited not only about the technology, but about the quality of leadership that we’re adding to our storage business."

Soran also announced that he "will be a VP at Dell". VP of what and for how long?

We continue to believe that Dell will not keep all Compellent’s employees. For examples, what is going to do Dell with two CFOs, his own one Brian Gladden and Compellent’s one Jack Judd, what with Compellent’s VP of business development and alliances Bruce Kornfeld?

A possibility here is that the relatively low price of the deal was negotiated in exchange of the insurance that Dell will keep all the Compellent’s staff. But Compellent’s shareholders have just adopted a "poison pill" to make it difficult the acquisition by another company. And as I you know, shareholders care about their money, not about the employees of the company they own.