Google outbid itself by 33 percent in Motorola Mobility acquisition, SEC filing reveals

Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility is already beginning to lose that new car smell, but a fresh batch of economic details has now emerged, providing deeper insight into how the deal actually went down. In keeping with an SEC filing that Motorola Mobility released yesterday, Google made an initial offer of $30 per share on August 1st, but soon raised that bid to $37 per share on August 9th, after Moto and its advisers asked for $43.50. On that very same day, Google again raised its offer to $40 per share, although Motorola wasn’t accepting bids from other firms, for fear that a public auction would jeopardize its sale. This 33 percent increase ultimately added some $3 billion to the pot, bringing the ultimate price ticket to $12.5 billion. A Mountain View spokeswoman declined to touch upon the negotiations, though its aggressive bidding means that the hunt giant desperately wanted the deal to move through. The documents also reveal that patent-related issues were on the forefront of discussions from the very beginning, when Google’s Senior Vice chairman Andy Rubin met with Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha to discuss their mutual concerns, long ago in July. Consistent with the Wall Street Journal, these talks eventually convinced Jha that his company can be under Google’s stewardship, amid fears that Moto could get swallowed by the stormy seas of patent litigation — anxieties that the exec made all too apparent just four days before the merger was announced. You may dig in the course of the full SEC filing on the source link below.