Cisco admitted that a quarter of its acquisitions haven’t worked out, according to a story in Australian IT.
Reporting from Networkers in Brisbane, Australian IT quotes Cisco senior vice president Howard Charney as saying:
“There are some acquisitions that we spent a lot of money on in the 90s that some people might say in hindsight that wasn’t so smart of you … At least two-thirds or three quarters of these meet a financial standard that has to do with products in the marketplace, satisfying customer needs, increasing customer satisfaction and providing some functionality that we didn’t have … But the converse of that is also true and approximately a quarter of our acquisitions don’t work.”
The story adds that while Charney didn’t name specific companies, Cisco reckons it was still able to reap benefits from the acquisitions’ intellectual property, staff and customers.
Which acquisitions do you think Charney is (or should be) referring to?
09/19/07 UPDATE: Read more about this at Layer 8, which delved into Cisco’s 10-K filing yesterday and discovered that some of Cisco’s failed buys could be in the optical market. Read more here and vote in the poll about Cisco’s recent acquisitions.
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