In this deal—a bid for US based 3COM, which among other things provides network security software to the US military– it was always hard to fathom why Bain Capital, a big time private equity firm, ever thought it could front for China’s Huawei, a Cisco competitor that is one of the least transparent big companies in a country not exactly known for corporate transparency. When the US Congress has a collective hissy fit over a Dubai based company wanting to buy some US ports, how in the world did Bain think Huawei would be allowed to buy even a minority stake into a US technology company that sells to the Pentagon?
Here is the link to today’s FT story, which describes the collapsing deal…
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c2091814-f6b5-11dc-bda1-000077b07658.html