Taking a deal akin to what was offered would have been a poor decision in light of the profits Autodesk was making at the time. Additionally, the concept that shopping around between investment offerings is dissuaded at all is a serious abuse of the market, distorting said market heavily in the investor's favor.

Hindsight is 20/20. Decisions should only be evaluated based on the information available at the time of the decision. Was Autodesk that successful at the time of that negotiation?

> at the time of these negotiations, generating sales equal to the size of the deal every month and generating after-tax profits close to the size of the deal every quarter.

Yes, they were already profitable and growing like crazy (30% month on month).