CapeClear gets swallowed by WorkDay   February 6th, 2008

I love it when predictions come true.

Hot off the presses is the news that CapeClear’s major partner in US, WorkDay, has swallowed them whole in an all Stock deal. Details are not yet available (nor will they ever be) but my bet is an all stock deal where the Cape Clear stock gets reverse into WorkDay Stock at a penal conversion ratio (100 to 1 ?).

The exit of the Director of Engineering, John Maughan, doesn’t bode well for the rest of the engineering team in Dublin, but Seamus in Silicon Valley must be pleased.

Annrai has the annoucement on the Cape Clear Blog.

I should add, that an exit is an exit. So many Irish Software companies exit via liquidation, so hats off to Annrai and Co. for getting this one across the line.

This deal may also make a lot of sense for WorkDay in the long run.

  1. The get a pre-baked engineering team based in a geography they want to sell to (Europe)
  2. The get access to Irish tax breaks (12.5% corporation tax)
  3. If they play their cards right they get to book all EU revenue through Ireland (just like Google, Oracle, EBay and Microsoft) which turns the whole thing into a giant tax-incentive scheme. This demands that they have a substantial engineering component in Ireland (which bodes well for the existing developers).

More news at:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 5:47 pm and is filed under capeclear, exits, workday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses

February 6th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Darren Barefoot Says:

Should I be happy that I didn’t buy my stock options?

February 6th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Joe Says:

Yes, very.

February 7th, 2008 at 10:22 am
conor Says:

So you’re saying it’s a crap exit?

February 7th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Liam Says:

Think I’d be pretty happy with an exit to Duffield. The guy founded peoplesoft and then in retirement raised $35m seed round to start workday! Based on his track record, Cape Clear are good with some high grade IPO stock = the ultimate goal.

February 7th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Joe Says:

Conor,

Any exit that doesn’t involve the liquidator must count as some kind of success for Ireland plc.

Joe.

February 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
conor Says:

Joe,

Fair enough. Hopefully Workday will become a success which would make it a bigger success for the exited Irish Plc.

Conor.

February 8th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
conor Says:

Joe,

Speaking of exits….

http://www.rte.ie/business/2008/0208/iona.html

Conor.

February 11th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Copacetic » Blog Archive » OpSource acquires LeCayla Says:

[...] Copacetic Ace King, Check it Out! « CapeClear gets swallowed by WorkDay [...]

February 11th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Simon Says:

Workday will also have the opportunity to offset future revenue against Cape Clear’s losses, so an enhancing the tax situation.

Leave a Reply