Dell Computer, once a titan of the PC industry in the 1990s, is rumored to be considering a private buyout that would take the corporation into the realm of private equity and allow it to reconfigure itself for future markets without the scrutiny of shareholders.

Rather than face the fate of RIM or HP, both of which watched their market share crumble due to corporate insulation in RIM‘s case and corporate mismanagement in HP‘s case, Dell would privatize itself in order to avoid a similar fate because of the need to meet the market demands for innovation while also creating shareholder value.

According to Dennis Howlett, writing for ZDNet:

It is far better to go through the transformation with the help of seasoned private equity but out of sight of public scrutiny. For all the bad press that private equity gets, they do two things that are often missing in public companies and especially those that have strong entrepreneurial DNA: they know how to exercise strong fiscal control and they know how to squeeze out waste that incumbent management struggles to overcome.

[ZD Net]