by Kevin M. Wells, for RiskMetrics Group, September 25, 2009.

Though not as prevalent as they once were, shareholder rights plans, commonly referred to as “poison pills,” remain a fixture of the corporate governance landscape. As the global economic crisis took a toll across U.S. and international capital markets over the past year, companies continued to adopt pills, albeit with more shareholder-friendly provisions. Indeed, an analysis of regulatory filings, proxy voting trends, and other data finds that companies are incorporating more shareholder-friendly provisions into their pills; moreover, companies are putting such plans to a shareholder vote in greater numbers than ever before.

Perhaps as a consequence of increased management votes to ratify or adopt pills, shareholder activism, as measured by filings of shareholder proposals to terminate or allow shareholders to vote on pills, has declined. However, those shareholder proposals appearing on ballots generally received high levels of support in 2009.

Amid the recent economic turmoil, 2009 has also seen the emergence of NOL poison pills, which are meant to protect companies’ tax assets rather than to deter acquisition offers. It was an NOL pill, in fact, that became the subject of controversy in Selectica v. Versata, pending in Delaware Chancery Court, which may significantly affect future uses of poison pills by Delaware companies…

To read this report click here.

Curt Monash was right. SAP does have questionable business ethics. It has been caught stealing ideas of as many as 5 patents and has been told to pay 139 Million $.

How many more patents does SAP have in it’s closet ( wink wink). By Funding Blogs, and Blog Communities how much time is SAP trying to buy, by raising prices aribitarily for locked in customers and using the one time gain to buy companies with better decision management pedigrees.

Don’t belive me, huh. Here is PC World or just google/bing for SAP, patent lawsuit

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/170899/versata_wins_139m_damages_in_sap_patent_lawsuit.html

When you get to just about any web site, you get a description.  Many sites don’t need a description.  They’re the site you know like eBay, Microsoft, Craigslist, or Amazon.   You know what those folks do.  But, when you start looking at software technology — it can be just about anything.  Tons and tons of software companies.  Public companies, tech start-ups, sole proprietors, and everything in between.  There are so many tech companies across so many sectors across so many continents. It’s just impossible to keep up with all of them.

That’s why I was real suprised when I heard about Versata.  I had actually heard about them, but not in this context.  My good friend Phil had sent a note over to take a look at their company description on the home page.  Here’s what it says:

Versata provides enterprise software solutions that deliver business results,
performance and scalability while dramatically reducing IT spending.
Versata’s patented solutions decrease IT expenditures by reducing hardware
and associated maintenance, leveraging open source technology, and
accelerating value delivery to business customers.

Huh?  Go ahead, read it again. 

Is it possible that it reads worse the second time than the first?   I really can’t describe where exactly it goes South, or maybe more importantly, what were they thinking.   I have no idea what they do.  But, regardless is anything that hard to describe.  Did they think that SEO ranking would be affected by it?  Did a consultant write it?

I’ve met marketers from this company, and believed was that they were good people.  Not sure they were involved in this messaging though.  So, what the heck happened?   Well, the best I can really do, is offer a few replacement suggestions.  Yea, sure these don’t describe the company like the existing piece that describes the company, but I can pretty much guarantee, people will get it or they will enjoy it.  So here goes:

• We make great IT stuff, call us so we can sell you some
• Yes, we have competitors, but ours is better
• Come buy our IT wares, they’re grrreeeaaaaattt!!!!
• There’s IT software, then there’s IT software
• We can’t explain it, but trust us people like it
• Don’t spend another dime until you’ve seen what we can do

Any of which is better than what I’m seeing on this site.  And, no doubt my suggestions are improper too. Perhaps you know the folks or executives at Versata?   Perhaps you know how you’d also like to improve the Versata home page?   At this point, almost anything would be an improvement.  But, I would just start with 1 sentence that explains (i.e. a description) of what you do.  At least people would know instead of scaring them away.