Back in the 1970s there was a large company which paid $380 million for a semiconductor company which had been the first to market with a 4k DRAM, a 16k DRAM and a 64k DRAM.
The large company subsequently spent $1 billion on its new acquisition in R&D, equipment, fabs and losses.
The semiconductor company couldn't make a 256k DRAM.
When the semiconductor company was losing $1 million a day, the large company hired, for $2 million, an executive who sold off the semiconductor company for $71 million.
MORAL: Past Performance Is No Guarantee Of Future Success
But you missed out the best bit of the story.
STM bought Mostek from United Technologies for $71M. Their DRAM designs were obsolete but their patents were a goldmine. STM went on to make $450M by licensing these patents to other DRAM manufacturers. Not a bad return on $71M.
Wow, Chris, that makes it a fantastic deal. And UTC had brought in Jim Fiebiger from Motorola for some huge amount of money, to get them out of Mostek. Seems it wasn't such a great exit for UTC - though maybe by that time they were desperate.