Joining of two forces - an end of one era and the beginning of another

2 days ago....April fools I might add....EMC announced their desire to acquire Conchango. This is the company that I currently work for in London and have been for only a short period of time. A lot of activity has occurred in those few months. In January Conchango was listed on AIM and this obviously generated a lot of interest. An offer of 23.1 pence which is a 44% premium on the current share price was made by EMC to acquire Conchango. This equates to 42 million pounds (84 million dollars)...which is quite a nice little nest egg for those involved. The details of the deal will take approximately a month of complete.

This is a first for me where a company I've been working for has been acquired...and this one is a doozy. EMC is a massive company with 37,000 employees worldwide and 13 billion in revenues. Needless to say it will be an interesting experience over the next little while.

Race on the Thames

Starting in 1829 and held annually since 1856, the boat race held between Oxford and Cambridge is a site that I probably wont forget for a while. There were an estimated 250,000 people on the banks of the Thames River watching this boat race and I've never seen so many people scream and yell and such an anti-climatic event. 5 of us took our positions at the White Hart 4 hours before the start of the race to ensure we had a spot only to see the boats zip by in a few seconds. Can't say that I didn't enjoy myself though. Weather for the day according to BBC Weather was clears skies, but that definitely didn't hold up. It poured rain for the majority of the day causing train delays throughout London and unruly conditions on the river. This of course led to the slowest race time in 40 years. I must say that it was quite a site seeing fans of both teams cheering like their lives depended on it. If anyone is curious....Oxford won this year.