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| Corel Corporation |
Corel Corporation (from the abbreviation "Cowpland Research Laboratory") is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. It is known for producing software titles such as CorelDRAW, for having acquired Jasc Software, developers of Paint Shop Pro, in October 2004, and other major companies and products such as Ulead Systems and WordPerfect.
History
Corel was founded by Michael Cowpland in 1985, as a research laboratory. The company had great success early in the high-tech boom of the 1990s with the product CorelDRAW, and became, for a time, the biggest software company in Canada. In 1996 it acquired Novell WordPerfect and started competing with the thought of being "Pepsi to Microsoft's Coke"[citation needed] as Microsoft Word was the top-used word processing software at the time. Corel's job was in a difficult position as Microsoft pushed pre-loaded copies of its software onto new computers. This mainly consisted of Microsoft Works office applications, but a variant called Works Suite also bundled the Microsoft Word software.
In August 2000 Cowpland was accused of insider trading and left. A new board of directors was then appointed and Derek Burney Jr., announced that the product line would be split into several brands—DeepWhite, ProCreate, and Corel. However, these plans would be scrapped, and only the Corel brand would remain. Corel acquired the graphics software company Micrografx in late 2001.
In August 2003, Corel was bought out by the private equity firm Vector Capital for $1.05 a share (slightly more than the cash in the company). The company was voluntarily delisted from the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchanges. Some U.S. shareholders alleged the management benefited from the buyout personally while the buyout price was too low. A lawsuit was filed in the U.S. to stop the buyout and was unsuccessful.
In March 2005 Corel announced that the United States Justice Department purchased 50,000 licenses of WordPerfect (adding to the worldwide user base of 20 million) and that WordPerfect was adding 4 million new users per year thanks to bundling deals with Dell. Corel contends that WordPerfect is the only viable alternative to Microsoft Office with sales 70 times more than Lotus' SmartSuite. On April 26, 2006, Corel completed its return to the public market with an initial public offering on NASDAQ, the same day finalizing the acquisition of WinZip, a well-known archiving software title.
On December 12, 2006, Corel completed its acquisitions of InterVideo and Ulead. The InterVideo acquisition was valued at around $196 million. In May 2008, CEO David Dobson announced that he was leaving the company to take a senior strategy role at Pitney Bowes.[citation needed] Dobson was replaced on May 8 by former Symantec executive Kris Hagerman.[citation needed] In November 2009, it was announced that Vector Capital would be purchasing the remaining shares of common stock in Corel Corporation. Upon completion, Corel will once again be privately owned.
On January 29, 2010, the shareholders of Corel approved its previously announced stock consolidation. The consolidation represented the second and final step in the acquisition of Corel by Corel Holdings, L.P., a limited partnership controlled by an affiliate of Vector Capital. Following approval of the Consolidation, Corel filed articles of amendment to effect the consolidation with the result that Corel is now wholly owned by Corel Holdings.
In January 2012, Corel acquired Roxio from Rovi Corporation for an undisclosed amount. Subsequently on July 2, 2012, Corel announced its acquisition of Pinnacle Systems, a developer of consumer-oriented video editing products (such as the Pinnacle Studio series) owned by Avid.
In December 2013, Corel went through another re-structuring by letting go the entire engineering and quality assurance team in its Taipei office, The Taipei office was the core development center of PaintShop Pro and VideoStudio, one of Corel's most well-known photo- and video-editing products. The 2013 re-structuring led to a complete handover of the product development to outsourced companies, and cut off support of pre- and post-purchase customer service. It was one of the largest layoffs within Corel since 2003, the year when Corel was bought by private equity firm Vector Capital, while the other two in 2008 and 2012. The company offers free 30 day warranty support to new customers.
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