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Tuesday, January 10, 2006 |
I've been trying to chase down a developing story in the manufacturing software space. An investment firm (Thoma Cressey Equity Partners has made an apparently unsolicited offer to purchase the shares of Citect the Austrialia based HMI/SCADA and MES software developer and supplier. The offer is $1.70 per share plus a $ 0.05 per share dividend. This is a $ 0.20 premium over an offer from Schneider Electric of last October and reported in my post. At this time, there is no comment from Citect.
Coincidence or opportunity? At just about the same time, Thoma Cressey has announced an equity stake in Made2Manage also a manufacturing software developer and supplier. The announcement notes that the investment firm is attracted by an aggressive acqusition strategy by Made2Manage. Do we see a battle brewing in this space between them and Infor? See my post about Infor's latest acquisition. When I predicted industry consolidation at the MESA conference, I wasn't sure it would happen this quickly.
5:19:31 PM 
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I've recently seen two movies that make liberal use of special effects animation -- King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. I'll admit that I'm not the hippest pop culture dude, and I seldom even read the reviews, but I thought the King flopped. As far as using animation to further the story and carry away the viewer in a way that you accept fauns, unicorns and the like as a natural extension of reality, Narnia captured it. I just went back to read some reviews of Kong to see if it was a "campy" movie rather than serious science fiction. Nope, the reviewers call it great action. I thought the special effects were simply overlaid over the story in a comic book sort of way. The friends we went with to see Kong (and the two who really wanted to see it) enjoyed it. But I noticed they--along with many in the audience--laughed at the scene where the actors were threatened with being stomped to death in a brontosaurus stampede. Now if this is gripping action, then somethng got lost in the translation. I felt that the director was just enamored of his special effects ability and forgot about the story. Narnia is a much better flick. (And that's without discussing theme, philosophy or theology -- some of which was a little obvious.)
5:03:11 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Gary Mintchell.
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