Interestingly, I think an earlier version of the title had "in all-stock deal", but I think the mods removed it. I wish they hadn't, as that's an important detail for the reasons you mention. (Also, ask James Baker, who was convinced by Goldman Sachs to sell Dragon Naturally Speaking in an all-stock deal ... of a company that turned out to be the Belgian Enron.)
I was in speech recognition tech during that time. It all tanked, but Dragon got screwed the hardest. ScanSoft (now Nuance) made out like a bandit with all the tech fire sales post-bust.
Yeah, I can't imagine how Baker (and all the employee-shareholders) must have felt about being advised not to do the standard half-cash-half-stock purchase and then turn out to be a fraud so soon.
