Michael Dell improves his offer again to take Dell private

The efforts to take Dell back to being a private company took yet another turn as the company postponed another planned shareholder vote today. The reason is that the company's founder and CEO Michael Dell, and his main financial partner Silver Lake, have improved their offer to shareholders yet again.

Last week, Michael Dell said that his "best and final offer" would be to give shareholders $13.75 a share, up from the first offer of $13.65 a share. Today, Dell and Silver Lake boosted their offer which now also gives shareholders a special dividend of 0.13 a share.  As we have mentioned before, Microsoft is throwing in $2 billion of its own money to help Dell go back to being a private company.

In return for the new offer, Dell's special committee has agreed to changes in the shareholder voting rules that have been requested by Michael Dell. Basically, any shareholder who does note vote for or against the offer will not have his or her vote counted. Previously, the rules stated that shareholders that choose not to vote were automatically listed in the "no" category.

Thanks to these changes, the Dell shareholder vote that was planned for today has been pushed back yet again, this time to September 12th. Dell still has to deal with activist investor and billionaire Carl Icahn, who says he will pay $14 for each share of Dell, while still keeping some of the company public.

Source: Dell | Image via Dell