For most folks, $12.5 billion would seem to be a lot of money but for an investor in Motorola Mobility it"s apparently not enough. Bloomberg reports that one of that company"s shareholders, John W. Keating, has filed a class action lawsuit against both companies, claiming that Motorola could do better than the price Google has offered to acquire the company. Google first announced its plans to purchase Motorola earlier this week.
The lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in Chicago, has Keating claiming, "The offered consideration does not compensate shareholders for the company’s intrinsic value and stand-alone alternatives going forward, nor does it compensate shareholders for the company’s value as a strategic asset for Google." He also has filed suit against all of Motorola"s board members and its CEO Sanjay Jha, claiming that they are not protecting the interests of its shareholders. He is seeking the court to block Google"s purchase of Motorola. Neither Google nor Motorola have commented on the lawsuit.
Google has said it wishes to acquire Motorola in order to help secure over 17,000 patents that are held by Motorola. Google has said it will run Motorola as a separate business if the acquisition is approved and is successfully closed. Motorola is one of many companies that has made smartphones and tablets for Google"s Android operating system. However Google has said that as far as Android is concerned Motorola will be treated like any third party company wanting to license its OS. However many industry analysts have expresses doubt that kind of hands-off relationship will really happen which could cause many Android based smartphone companies to pull its support.