Michael Dell's quest to take his namesake company off the stock market in 2013 was anything but easy.
First of all, healthy companies typically don't abandon their ticker symbols to avoid Wall Street's never-ending pressure to grow bigger and produce more profit. And, in order to regain control, Dell had to orchestrate a huge buyout plan with much of his own money and the help of private equity firm Silver Lake.
Since then, Dell has been happy to tell almost anyone that he loves operating as a private company -- free to pursue the best path without the quarterly earnings reports that generate negative headlines when things aren't peachy and profitable.
“We don’t have to cater to short-term thinking that exists in the market,” he said not so long ago. “We can think in decades.”
But Dell is seemingly too restless to settle on one future -- or one product.
The computer and server giant on Monday announced it's going public once again, albeit in a rather complicated way. Dell and Silver Lake have reportedly reached a $21.7 billion deal to buy shares that track the performance of VMWare, which Dell partially owns, back from investors.
The cash piece of the deal will be financed by a dividend VMWare pays to its shareholders, Reuters reported. Dell owns most of it and will get roughly $9 billion.
It will trade as DVMT.
The move will put Dell back into the public sphere in a sense, even though Dell will remain a private company. The deal allows the Dell and its primary investor to retain more control than is typical for initial public offerings.
The deal also will allow Dell to remain CEO and chairman of his company.
