Word: gateways
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There have been rumors for weeks that growth-obsessed Compaq was stalking Gateway. Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer has said he wants to more than double his company's revenues, to $40 billion, by the end of the decade. Compaq, an outstanding performer in a difficult-to-manage industry, amassed $4 billion in cash at the end of 1996 so Pfeiffer could go shopping. Earlier this year he talked with Micron Technology about buying its mail-order computer company, Micron Electronics. No sale...
Inflation may be at a historic low, but the price of independence is climbing. What better evidence than the ponytailed Ted Waitt, founder and 46% owner of South Dakota's mail-order computer retailer Gateway 2000? Waitt, 34, the son of a fourth-generation cattle broker, has just walked away from a monumental deal with Compaq Computer that would have left him with a personal fortune of more than $3 billion. No, he did not get kicked in the head...
...last month Pfeiffer figured he had reeled in one of the computer industry's prize catches in Gateway, the iconoclastic Sioux City outfit whose packaging bears the black-and-white markings of a cow's hide but whose burgeoning revenues are 100% filet mignon. Few know or even suspect just how close Pfeiffer came. The contracts were ready, and Waitt had the proverbial pen in hand before he evidently had a cathartic flash and rejected a nearly $7 billion takeover by Compaq. Gateway's current market value is $4.8 billion...
Waitt, a college dropout who founded Gateway in his father's Iowa farmhouse, put a stop to the deal only days, possibly hours, before it was to be announced. The exact details aren't clear, but at one point Pfeiffer and Waitt met at Waitt's sprawling estate on the Missouri River. Gateway's public relations firm, New York City-based Hill & Knowlton, had begun preparing a press release. Waitt had even dispatched a courier to foreign offices to deliver the news to key executives. But ultimately Waitt couldn't sign on the dotted line. The deal appears to have...
...eyes on a bigger prize: telephone service. As it gets easier to make phone calls over the Internet (something Schwob expects within the next 12 months), Homegate will become a realistic alternative to long-distance phone service. That Alaskan businessman will be able to connect to the Jakarta Net gateway and "call up" any number around the world at the 10[cents] a minute rate. A laptop and a modem will allow anyone to bypass the expensive (and difficult) international phone system, offering millions in savings. Homegate has already signed up one corporate customer for 25,000 copies...