Press Release [ source ] - Cisco Announces Agreement to Acquire WebEx

Acquisition Furthers Cisco’s Vision for Enabling Collaboration in the SMB Market

SAN JOSE, CA and SANTA CLARA, CA — (MARKET WIRE) — March 15, 2007 — Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and WebEx today announced a definitive agreement for Cisco to acquire WebEx. WebEx is a market leader in on-demand collaboration applications, and its network-based solution for delivering business-to-business collaboration extends Cisco’s vision for Unified Communications, particularly within the Small to Medium Business (SMB) segment.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco will commence a cash tender offer to purchase all of the outstanding shares of WebEx for $57 per share and will assume outstanding share-based awards, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $3.2 billion, or approximately $2.9 billion net of WebEx’s existing cash balance. The transaction will be accounted for in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles, and the acquisition of WebEx is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2007. Cisco anticipates this transaction will be neutral to its non-GAAP FY2008 earnings.

The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is subject to various standard closing conditions, including approval under Hart Scott Rodino and similar laws outside the U.S.

"As collaboration in the workplace becomes increasingly important, companies are looking for rich communications tools to help them work more effectively and efficiently," said Charles H. Giancarlo, Chief Development Officer at Cisco. "The combination of Cisco and WebEx will deliver compelling solutions accelerating this next wave of business communications.

Cisco believes the network is a platform for all forms of communications and collaboration, and WebEx’s technology and services portfolio complement Cisco’s leadership in the Unified Communications and collaboration market, while providing Cisco with a new and unique business model to expand its presence in the fast-growing SMB market," Giancarlo continued.

"Cisco and WebEx share a vision of web collaboration as a key to accelerating business processes and critical to durable competitive advantage," said Subrah S. Iyar, CEO of WebEx. "Cisco’s global reach and customer focus will help us extend our core web collaboration applications and continue to broaden the services we offer through the WebEx Connect platform."

WebEx’s service portfolio includes technologies and services that allow companies to engage in real-time and asynchronous data conferences over the Internet as well as share web-based documents and workspaces that help improve productivity, performance and efficiency of workers in any size organization. WebEx’s subscription-based services strategy has been key to its success, and Cisco plans to preserve this business model going forward.

Following the close of the transaction, WebEx will become a part of Cisco’s Development Organization while maintaining its unique business model. Mr. Iyar will report directly to Mr.Giancarlo.

WebEx was founded in 1995 and held its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in July 2000. The company has close to 2200 employees. For FY2006, which ended December 31, 2006, WebEx reported revenues of $380 million.

Editor’s Note:

--  A conference call with Cisco Chief Development Officer Charles    Giancarlo and WebEx CEO Subrah Iyar to discuss Cisco's acquisition of WebEx    will be held at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, March 15, 2007.  The    dial-in number is 1-888-989-6518 (United States); 212-287-1617    (international); corresponding slides and a webcast will be available at    www.cisco.com/go/investors.

--  A replay of the Cisco/WebEx conference call will be available from    11:30 a.m. Eastern Time on March 15, 2007, until 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on    Thursday, March 22, 2007.  The dial-in number is 1-866-430-8796 (United    States); 203-369-0942 (international).

--  Additional information regarding the acquisition will be available at    http://newsroom.cisco.com.    

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

About WebEx

With 2.2 million registered users, WebEx (NASDAQ: WEBX) is the global leader in on-demand applications for collaborative business on the web. These applications enhance high-touch business processes, such as sales and training, with efficient web-touch interactions. As an on-demand provider, WebEx is able to facilitate both internal and external collaboration. WebEx delivers its range of applications over the WebEx MediaTone Network, a global network specifically designed for the secure delivery of on-demand applications. WebEx applications support multipoint videoconferencing, web conferencing and application remote control. WebEx is based in Santa Clara, California and has regional headquarters in Europe, Asia and Australia. Please call toll free 877-509-3239 or visit www.WebEx.com for more information.

Cisco, Cisco Systems, Linksys and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

WebEx and the WebEx logo are registered trademarks of WebEx.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains projections and other forward-looking statements regarding expected performance of Cisco following completion of the acquisition, including statements related to Cisco’s product and service offerings and the future of the network and communications markets. Statement regarding future events are based on the parties’ current expectations and are necessarily subject to associated risks related to, among other things, obtaining a sufficient number of tendered shares of common stock and regulatory approval of the merger, the potential impact on the business of WebEx due to the uncertainty about the acquisition, the retention of employees of WebEx and the ability of Cisco to successfully integrate WebEx and to achieve expected benefits. Actual results may differ materially from those in the projections or other forward-looking statements. For information regarding other related risks, please see the "Risk Factors" section of Cisco’s filings with the SEC, including its most recent filings on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.

Securities Law Disclosure

The tender offer for the outstanding common stock of WebEx has not yet commenced. This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to buy or the solicitation of an offer to sell any securities. The solicitation and the offer to buy shares of WebEx common stock will be made only pursuant to an offer to purchase and related materials that Cisco Systems, Inc. intends to file with the SEC on Schedule TO. WebEx also intends to file a solicitation/recommendation statement on Schedule 14D-9 with respect to the offer. WebEx stockholders and other investors should read these materials carefully because they contain important information, including the terms and conditions of the offer. WebEx stockholders and other investors will be able to obtain copies of these materials without charge from the SEC through the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov, from Georgeson Inc., the information agent for the offer, toll-free at (888) 264-7052 (banks and brokers call (212) 440-9800), from Cisco (with respect to documents filed by Cisco with the SEC) by going to Cisco’s Investor Relations Website at http://www.cisco.com/go/investors, or from WebEx (with respect to documents filed by WebEx with the SEC) by going to WebEx’s Investor Relations Website at www.WebEx.com. Stockholders and other investors are urged to read carefully those materials prior to making any decisions with respect to the offer.

For direct RSS Feeds of all Cisco news, please visit "News@Cisco" at the following link:

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/podcasts/rss.html

Yet another link caught my eye this morning.  I see this ad frequently but have always ignored it. The way I look at it, anyone who builds a website aimed at trying to warn you of fraud surrounding 99% of the programs on the internet purporting to be making millionaires, or at the very least 6-figure income earners, out of ordinary folks like you, then goes on to praise a program they have found that actually works (or, as in the case of therichprince.com, 3 programs they’ve found that really work), are themselves fishy in smell. Now, fishy in smell doesn’t necessarily mean the thing is spoiled rotten and should be sent down the garbage disposal; but if I wasn’t sure if a fish I was about to consume was going to poison me, I would err on the side of caution rather than take the risk of racking up a hospital emergency room bill to the tune of 2grand.

The rich prince, or Andrew Koffman according to the website therichprince.com, has an honest-sounding way of getting his message across. He comes off sounding like he’s honestly just sharing information with you about legitimate programs he has found after doing extensive research by contacting the administrator of every website he could find that promises to have a system you can use to acquire the wealth you seek quickly and easily. He says that he posed as an investor interested in buying the website and business in question so he could obtain free access to the member’s area, and much to his disgust he found 99% of the programs to be useless. He writes:

I quickly realized that these so-called Get Rich Quick programs were totally useless. And the owners knew it, yet they were laughing all the way to the bank!

His tone is sincere and you don’t get a feeling from him that he’s just out to deceive you himself. Whatever the psychology behind his approach, it is probably proving effective. While those guys running the project payday program over at projectpayday.com utilize a reverse psychology tactic as previously discussed, Andrew Koffman, assuming that’s his real name, takes a more positive, more friendly, less offensive approach. He talks to you like he might talk to his friend. He tries to come off like he’s just sharing information about his experience digging through a basket filled with rotten, worm-infested apples, letting you know that, miraculously he found 3 good apples in the basket that were gleaming with health. As he puts it:

Surprisingly, while sifting through all of the scam artists’ websites, I was able to locate a couple of individuals that actually ran legitimate programs.

And he then goes on talk about the 3 good apples, how ripe and firm they were, how shiny and  beautiful, how delicious-looking; but better to eat them now because if you leave them too long to admire them, they will spoil and you’ll no longer have the opportunity to make apple sauce, or apple pies, or apple cider or candied apple, apple juice, apple pudding, apple dumplings or dried apples, or apple cobbler or apple salad or anything at all with apple in it.

The owners were every day people like you and me that found a way to make extra money working from home on their computers. Their membership areas were impressive, with a good amount of quality information on how to make $100-$200 per day on your computer doing very little work. I even chatted with a few of their customers in several online forums, and they verified that they were making extra money through the sites. It was like I found a few diamonds in the rough. But don’t take my word for it, you can visit the three sites I found below. See what you think.

They do charge a minimal fee for access to their program, which is to be expected for any legitimate company that actually has people on staff who are dedicated to helping you get started. What a friendly group of people! Anyway, if you do decide you are interested in any of the three programs below, I advise you to join quickly, as the owners have, since the owners informed me that they are not sure as too how many more members they can accommodate within the next 3 days. (By the way, you did not hear this from me!) They don’t have a large enough staff to accommodate many more people, and they are dedicated to providing excellent service to each person.

I have not talked with Andrew Koffman. I have not tried his program. I don’t know for a fact that he is a fraud himself; but for me personally, the first fishy thing about the rich prince’s online marketing review website that has as it’s slogan, "exposing online scams for a safe Internet", is the fact that he pays money to advertise his website. When you get to the point of paying money to get your ad placed across the Google adsense publisher network, you’re taking pretty aggressive steps in your effort to make a profit from your website. You’re banking on the risk of investing money in advertising via a program as risky for the advertiser as Google Adwords, paying off in sales of something.

Koffman would probably like you to think he’s just being nice and sharing information with you because he understands your predicament having gone down the same road you’re going down right now, looking for legitimate ways to make money, FED UP, with get rich quick scams. He winks at you when he tells you, "By the way you did not hear this from me!" This is meant to make you feel like you’re getting wind of a secret that you weren’t supposed to know, one that’s going to be helpful to you. So, naturally you’re going to think he’s got to be a really nice guy to give you the heads-up like that by letting you know that if you don’t sign up in the next 3-days you’re going to miss out the opportunity of a life time.

Further proving how upright and honest he is, and how his only interest is in helping you to find legitimate opportunities, Koffman warns emphatically:

Whatever you do **DO NOT** buy or pay to join any of these programs until you have tried all of the other "Get Rich Quick" programs out there and are unsatisfied with them, as you and I both **KNOW** you will be.

Here he’s switching tactics a bit, using reverse psychology, banking on you figuring, well, this guy seems on the up and up. He’s so straight up he’s insisting you try all the programs first so you can see for yourself how honest he is. If he wasn’t sure of what he was talking about he wouldn’t tell you go go ahead and try all the other programs first. So you’ll save yourself the time and headaches and just go with the programs he’s recommending straight away. After all, who has time and money to throw away on thousands of scam wealth building programs and systems? His tactic could also work another way on the more hardcore skeptics. Those people might go ahead and try a few other programs and discover that, indeed, they were all a waste of time and money. Then they’ll remember that Koffman warned them beforehand that they were going to be unsatisfied with the programs. They’ll think to themselves, well, Koffman was right about the other programs being a waste of time, so maybe he’s also right about the 3 programs he recommended being legitimate.

Either way, as I see it, there is nothing going on here other than Andrew Koffman trying to make money off of you by exploiting your desperation to make money. That is not to say the programs he touts cannot help you to make money. I haven’t tried them so I cannot say yes they can or no they can’t; but he himself admits that sites like his are generally a waste of your time and money. Of course, his site is an exception to the rule. After all, he’s just a nice guy trying to give you some information. He’s not trying to sell you anything. He’s just spending money to bring you to his site so he can tell you about programs owned by other people that helped him make money and can help you make money too. Yeah, you do have to pay those ‘other’ people who own the programs; but you don’t have to pay ‘him’ anything. And if he was a fraud, he’d charge you money for the information he’s giving you free of charge wouldn’t he? Except, when you buy the programs he’s tooting, you are in fact paying him. He gets a percentage of every sale. And that’s how he’s making his money. The same way as the other 99% of the scam artists he talks about.