Corsair to be bought by an investment firm.

dowie said:
And the previous owners didn't care about the bottom line - they were just in business for fun or something?

this idea that a change of ownership automatically means something bad for consumers is pretty dubious
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Presumably if you make a company, you care a little bit less about losing a bit of money occasionally and more about the size of your company, it's image or just because it's yours.

The previous owner is the business starter, so I presume he has slightly more lee-way allowed for his company.
 
kindai said:
Your sarcasm hides a very naive view of what pressures investment companies apply to brands.
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Ok so why does your generic conspiracy like view of investment companies not apply to the investment company that invested in this brand in 2013?

Why is this new investment company suddenly 'evil' and the previous one 'good'? Simply because now the founder has fully cashed out?

Do you actually have anything to base your view on because despite calling me naive for questioning it there is something rather dubious to automatically assume that someone wanting to invest in a company is automatically planning to do something negative relating to simply cost cutting and not attempt to grow it further.
 
spoffle said:
What's your opinion on the matter @Ace Modder?
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Not sure, it could benefit the brand. Only time will tell.
Maybe they will expand into more things. Investors usually want to see fast return on their moneys, so an expansion is surely on the table for Corsair.

Look at OcUK, they were bought by Caseking, but done via an investment company - OcUK have expanded into new area's, B2B, trade etc. Corsair as a manufacturer surely will do some form of expansion as well.
 
dowie said:
Ok so why does your generic conspiracy like view of investment companies not apply to the investment company that invested in this brand in 2013?

Why is this new investment company suddenly 'evil' and the previous one 'good'? Simply because now the founder has fully cashed out?

Do you actually have anything to base your view on because despite calling me naive for questioning it there is something rather dubious to automatically assume that someone wanting to invest in a company is automatically planning to do something negative relating to simply cost cutting and not attempt to grow it further.
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The deal 4 years ago was an investment in the company, from what I understand to allow them to purchase other brands and integrate them into their own. For all intents, this was simply a large shareholder purchase.

This is a takeover. 2 very different things.
 
kindai said:
The deal 4 years ago was an investment in the company, from what I understand to allow them to purchase other brands and integrate them into their own. For all intents, this was simply a large shareholder purchase.

This is a takeover. 2 very different things.
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yup, I'm aware of that, I did mention that in my post re: the founder has now fully cashed out

the question is still valid though - why is it inherently bad?

an investment company owning part of the company is good but an investment company owning the whole thing is evil?

I mean look at their previous investments - they invested in a company called Maybelline back in 1990 and exited in 1996... didn't grind it into the ground but rather that company is still doing rather well as a massive global cosmetics brand... oh those evil investors...
 
dowie said:
yup, I'm aware of that, I did mention that in my post re: the founder has now fully cashed out

the question is still valid though - why is it inherently bad?

an investment company owning part of the company is good but an investment company owning the whole thing is evil?
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I've already explained why, not going to repeat myself.
 
kindai said:
I've already explained why, not going to repeat myself.
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you haven't though, you've just taken a position that investments in companies is inherently a bad thing that will involve cost cutting etc.. which is frankly a ridiculous position and not really grounded in reality. Having spent several years working in a company with PE backing (from the point at which they invested through to the company more then doubling in size and being sold) I know first hand that your assertion is BS as a general rule - FWIW we shared office space with others in the tech portfolio too who also grew and moved out.

I'm not claiming this particular investment company won't do that, but simply making that claim with no basis is silly and that is what I was highlighting
 
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Rroff said:
I have the Corsair 540 Air and would probably use one for my next build as well - sadly the updates in that line up are a bit underwhelming compared to the 540 and 240 cases.
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Love the 540, only with it has the obsidian series quality. Aluminium with a steel frame but in a shape of a 540 would be perfect.
 
Avenged7Fold said:
Love the 540, only with it has the obsidian series quality. Aluminium with a steel frame but in a shape of a 540 would be perfect.
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Yeah - as much as I like the case I'd happily pay a bit more for some metal on it - the struts on the top vent especially due to being abs or whatever can vibrate fairly easily if you aren't careful. I felt kind of let down by the 740 - maybe it was meant for a different market segment - but I felt like it didn't build on the spirit of the 540 and what it did well while not addressing the couple of small common complaints people had with the 540.
 
dowie said:
you haven't though, you've just taken a position that investment in companies is inherently a bad thing that will involve cost cutting etc.. which is frankly a ridiculous position and not really grounded in reality

I'm not claiming this particular investment company won't do that, but simply making that claim with no basis is silly and that is what I was highlighting
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He's right though I work in M&A and deal with private equity clients regularly and what he said is very much rooted in reality. Generally speaking they'll buy a company, strip out what they deem unecesary costs to improve the bottom line and increase the prospect of better ebitda multiples when they inevitably divest in 3-5 years.
 
SS-89 said:
He's right though I work in M&A and deal with private equity clients regularly and what he said is very much rooted in reality. Generally speaking they'll buy a company, strip out what they deem unecesary costs to improve the bottom line and increase the prospect of better ebitda multiples when they inevitably divest in 3-5 years.
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that's funny because in my experience they hired a bunch of people, invested in a new project and funded us to take over a few other companies prior to selling us on

the CEO, CFO and some guy who was like a 'minister without portfolio' were all put in by the PE firm, some top brass were sacked to make room for them - they all exited when the firm was sold

a bunch of us met the overall partner in charge of their tech investments a few times, he stuck with what he said they intended to do at the start, which was to grow the company... and like I said in the other post similar thing happened to a couple of other smaller firms that shared part of our office space initially.

cost cutting, redundancies and scrapping projects etc.. happened after the PE firm exited and the company was owned by another in the same sector
 
dowie said:
that's funny because in my experience they hired a bunch of people, invested in a new project and funded us to take over a few other companies prior to selling us on
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You get both TBH and unfortunately the other side of the coin to what you are talking about isn't a completely uncommon story. People just tend to notice it more when it happens.
 
Rroff said:
You get both TBH and unfortunately the other side of the coin to what you are talking about isn't a completely uncommon story. People just tend to notice it more when it happens.
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Yeah I'm not denying that at all - I'm just objecting to the default view from some that this particular bit of news is bound to be a bad thing. It might well be but unless people are offering something more like citing examples where this particular firm has a track record of doing X or Y then it is just silliness.
 
dowie said:
Yeah I'm not denying that at all - I'm just objecting to the default view from some that this particular bit of news is bound to be a bad thing. It might well be but unless people are offering something more like citing examples where this particular firm has a track record of doing X or Y then it is just silliness.
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I think the problem is as per the end of my post that when things do go wrong with these types of investments it tends to be remembered more than when they are successful.
 
dowie said:
that's funny because in my experience they hired a bunch of people, invested in a new project and funded us to take over a few other companies prior to selling us on

the CEO, CFO and some guy who was like a 'minister without portfolio' were all put in by the PE firm, some top brass were sacked to make room for them - they all exited when the firm was sold

a bunch of us met the overall partner in charge of their tech investments a few times, he stuck with what he said they intended to do at the start, which was to grow the company... and like I said in the other post similar thing happened to a couple of other smaller firms that shared part of our office space initially.

cost cutting, redundancies and scrapping projects etc.. happened after the PE firm exited and the company was owned by another in the same sector
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There are obviously instances where you get the flip side hence why I said generally not always. That being said we don't deal with mid-cap market as much, more large PE firms such as Blackrock/Carlyle/TPG and that is mostly their M.O. given that we end up regularly working on sell-side 3-5 years after we initially assisted on buy-side.

PE backing is definitely not always a bad thing but stating that the flip side to your view isn't rooted in reality wasn't a fair point.

To go back to your point how highly leveraged was the initial acquisition? Just because the cost cutting, redundancies and scrapping happened post-exit doesn't mean it wasn't borne out of the previous owners operations. We've seen it before where in the pursuit of high growth companies are highly leveraged and then once divested for significant profit the new owners are left holding the bag to balance the books.

Anyway lets hope this isn't bad news for Corsair as it would be a shame for a good company like them to be stripped of what made them a strong brand.
 
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