Lenovo CEO tells the whole story behind the Motorola deal in funny details
Back in 2011 the two respectful gentlemen from Lenovo asked for the wrong CEO
After years of persuasion and fail attempts, last week Lenovo finally have managed to get closer in bying Motorola. It appears that the Chinese company will have a reason to celebrate as CEO Yuanqing Yang of Lenovo got back to his home country after a successful deal with Motorola. In a press conference, the CEO revealed to the media more details about how the purchase went down and revealed the whole story behind the epic saga of two companies that couldn’t reach each other for so many years.
It all began back in 2011 when Lenovo wanted to buy Motorola after the last one split into the two separate units of Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions. Lenovo CEO Yang and CFO Ming decided to hurry up and step into action and went straight to the Motorola HQ in the US in order to initiate talks with their CEO. And here comes the funny part- the two respectful gentlemen asked for the wrong CEO and initiated talks with Motorola Solution CEO Greg Brown instead of Motorola Mobility CEO Sanjay Jha. Unfortunately as Mr Brown had nothing to do with the Mobile part that Lenovo were interested in, the two executives could only exchange some platitudes with go, while being kept in the dark about the Google deal. Later, CEO Yang learned about Google’s offer to buy Motorola for $12.5 billion and invited its Chairman Erick Schmidt for a dinner in order to discuss any possibility of co-operation. Mr Yang even introduced the Chairman to some of Lenovo’s products and made him sure that had he ever decided to sell Motorola, Lenovo would have cashed in.
Fortunately for Lenovo, this moment finally arrived and just two months ago Chairman Schmidt e-mailed CEO Yang with ‘Are you still interested in Motorola?’ It appears that it didn’t take too long for Lenovo to cash the ‘Money in the Bank’ case as the deal is already waiting to get its regulatory approvals. Although Motorola is currently a small player in the roster of smartphone giants, the company can brag with an excellent portfolio with lines such as the Motorola Moto X, Motorola Moto G and Motorola Droid Ultra.
Source: Sina Tech
